LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Israel used the word preemptive to describe its strikes on Iran over a week ago. The U.S. described its strikes over the weekend as a deterrent. And Iran is claiming the right to self-defense. So what does international law say about all this? For that, Matthias Goldmann joins me now to discuss this. He's chair of international law at EBS Law School in Germany. Hello. Thank you for being on the program.
MATTHIAS GOLDMANN: Good morning from Germany.
FADEL: So Israel said it was acting in self-defense in striking Iran. The U.S., as I said, is calling its weekend attack on Iran's nuclear facilities a deterrent. Are these strikes, both the ones Israel carried out and now the ones the U.S. carried out, permissible under international law?
GOLDMANN: No, I think both these strikes are not permissible under international law. Under international law, states are prohibited from using military force against each other except if the Security Council authorizes such action. The only exemption is self-defense. Now the question is, is it possible to defend yourself against a strike that you think might happen in the future? And the conditions when that is permissible are quite narrow. That's only possible if the attack of the other state - that means Iran in this case - would be imminent.
And imminence, that requires it would happen rather soon, and you would not have any other means of defending yourself except striking now. And I think that's not a given. Iran may have some fissionable material, but it doesn't have a working bomb - at least, that's what we know. And the second thing is that there have been many negotiations in the past month. And even though they were rather difficult, they had not reached a dead end yet. So there were other means, you know, for Israel of avoiding any such attack if Iran should ever decide to go down that road.
FADEL: And the United States' strikes also not permissible under international law?
GOLDMANN: In general, if one state exercises legitimate self-defense, another state, like the United States, may support it and also act in self-defense or invoke that self-defense. But since Israel, as I just said, does not have a right to defend itself, the United States also doesn't have a right of self-defense.
FADEL: What about Iran? Iran is saying now, well, we have the right to self-defense. What does international law say there?
GOLDMANN: Well, in principle that's true because if you consider the attacks by Israel and the U.S. as illegitimate uses of preemptive self-defense, a term that has been rejected by the large majority of states, it means that Iran would have a right to self-defense. However, that self-defense needs to be limited to what is necessary and proportionate. And of course, you have to respect the rules of the laws of war. For example, you cannot just send missiles and anything on Israel without discriminating between military targets and civilian targets. And that's exactly what Iran is doing. So it's having a right of self-defense, but it's exercising it in a illegal way.
FADEL: So I'm hearing from you that really all parties here are violating international law as you interpret it and as you've studied it. So what recourse is there for international law to be applied and complied with if countries just don't do it?
GOLDMANN: Yeah, it's terribly difficult to enforce international law, especially against powerful states like the United States. But even the United States needs to consider that there is other actors in the international community, like, for example, China. Do you really want to implement rules, or do you want to break rules that might protect the United States and U.S. interests against what China or any other state is doing? So this long-term perspective. And that is a avenue how international law might be enforced. And we might also see some court action here, for example, before the International Court of Justice.
FADEL: Matthias Goldmann is the chair of international law at EBS Law School in Germany. Thank you so much for joining us.
GOLDMANN: My pleasure. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SNAAP AND BEATMOLOGY'S "BIRDLAND") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
