'Very concerning': US challenges 'international norms' with Iran strike
In the lead up to the Iraq War in 2003, United States Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the UN Security Council to present evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which required the US to take military action.
The evidence, of course, turned out to be false.
But the US was at least going through the motions of following the UN charter: seeking international approval, and making the case for war, before firing a shot.
Donald Trump didn't bother with either.
In fact, he openly rejected the assessment of his own security agencies that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, nor planned to.
"My intelligence community is wrong," he said.
But Trump presented no evidence to support his own, differing assessment.
Nor has he made the case as to why the threat of a nuclear armed Iran needed to be solved right now by military, rather than diplomatic, means.
There is general agreement in the international community that Iran should not become a nuclear power.
Not just because of the immediate threat an Iranian nuclear weapon would pose to Israel and other countries but because it would almost certainly spark a new nuclear arms race in the Gulf and beyond.
And there are important questions Iran needs to answer about its nuclear program.
Why, for example, does it possess a stockpile of uranium enriched to around 60 per cent, when a domestic nuclear program only requires around 3 per cent enrichment?
And why did the International Atomic energy Agency (IAEA) recently find that Iran has not been fully cooperating with nuclear inspectors since 2019?
These are important facts. But they are not evidence that Iran was on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon, resulting in the kind of imminent, unavoidable threat that would justify a military strike under the UN charter of self defence.
"I can't really find a firm basis for this US action," Don Rothwell, a professor of international law at the Australian National University, said.
"The United States has not been subject to an Iranian armed attack, so that removes its right under the UN charter."
It puts American allies like Australia in a difficult position. Like other major countries, Australia did not call for the US to enter this war; instead it called for de-escalation, dialogue and diplomacy.
Now that the strike has happened, Foreign Minister Penny Wong says Australia does support the US bombing raid.
"The world has agreed Iran cannot be allowed to get a nuclear weapon, so yes, we support action to prevent that, and that is what this is," she told the ABC's AM program.
At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council this morning, the US representative Dorothy Shea said the US attack was justified and legal.
"This operation sought to eliminate a long standing but rapidly escalating source of global insecurity and to aid our ally Israel in our inherent right of collective self-defence, consistent with the UN Charter," she said.
"The time finally came for the United States in the defence of its ally [Israel], and in the defence of our own citizens and interests, to act decisively."
Rothwell worries about the precedent that has been set by the US action.
"We've seen an erosion of some of these international norms, especially when it comes to the use of force [in] pre-emptive self-defence," he said.
"It's very concerning. Because if these states are interpreting their right to exercise self-defence in this way, of course other states will look on and say, 'If the United States can do this, why can't we also use this right of self-defence to disarm our enemies in this way?'"
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