The US-Israeli military action will test the fragile rules governing the use of force<\/p>\n
The killing of Iran\u2019s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei<\/a>, by a US-Israeli strike is a targeted assassination of a head of state. It also marks a grave escalation in a region already burdened with smouldering\u00a0wars and fragile states. The consequences\u00a0of the deliberate strike will reverberate across a Middle East marked by the aftershocks of foreign intervention. Revulsion against the hardline regime in Tehran<\/a>, or the desire for a better future for the Iranian people, does not confer a legal justification.<\/p>\n Force is lawful, under the UN charter, only in self-defence against an imminent attack or with security council approval. Neither condition has been met. There was no evidence of an \u201cinstant, overwhelming<\/a>\u201d\u00a0Iranian attack being prepared. What Donald Trump\u2019s Operation Epic Fury looks like is not pre-emption but prevention: a decision to eliminate a future risk while an enemy appeared weak. It is a war of choice<\/a>. Mr\u00a0Trump\u2019s call to overthrow<\/a> a sovereign government was extraordinary.<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The US-Israeli military action will test the fragile rules governing the use of force The killing of Iran\u2019s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, by a US-Israeli strike is a targeted assassination of a head of state. It also marks a grave escalation in a region already burdened with smouldering\u00a0wars and fragile states. The consequences\u00a0of the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67707\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}