The US Unprovoked Bombing of Iran Exposes Western Hypocrisy

It is not yet clear how much damage was done to Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities by the fourteen bunker-buster bombs the United States dropped last weekend. But the damage done to international law, not only by the bombing but also by the response of America’s allies, is very clear.

The hypocrisy is stunning. Washington and its Western allies have committed to a military and intelligence operation against Russia in defense of Ukraine so massive that it has put the world on the brink of nuclear war more than once. The weight of the justification for that effort rests, in large part, on the defense of international law and especially the ban on any nation violating the sovereignty of another nation with an aggressive attack.

And yet, the U.S. committed that very crime by attacking, without approval of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), a sovereign nation that had neither attacked nor threatened it. 

America’s action and the response to it by its allies exposes the charade of international law. In the U.S.-led rules-based order, there is no consistently applied international law; Washington and its allies selectively apply the rules when they suit them and exempt themselves from the rules when they do not.

That reality is laid bare not only by America’s illegal bombing of Iran but by Europe, NATO, and Ukraine’s justification of that attack while simultaneously condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. [MORE]