The recent strikes on Iran are more than just another geopolitical flare-up; they are the manifestation of a failing international order, where the “mutually binding rules-based order” is being replaced by the pantomime of strongman politics.

This approach is not only dangerous (while some sink incalculable amounts of money and effort into keeping nuclear facilities safe, others just go out and bomb them) it is illegal, illegitimate, hypocritical, immoral, and ultimately, strategically self-defeating.

The action was a flagrant breach of foundational international law. The United Nations Charter, in Article 2(4), establishes a near-absolute prohibition on the threat or use of force. The only exception, outlined in Article 51, is the inherent right to self-defence “if an armed attack occurs”—a condition that was demonstrably not met. Any attempt to justify this as a “pre-emptive strike” collapses under legal scrutiny.

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Even the historical standard for anticipatory self-defence, the Caroline doctrine, makes this clear. This doctrine was established, with deep irony, not to justify aggression, but to limit it, born from an incident where the United States itself was the victim. In 1837, when British forces crossed into US territory to destroy the steamboat Caroline for supplying Canadian rebels, it was the US Secretary of State Daniel Webster who furiously protested the violation of American sovereignty. In doing so, he set the high bar that for a pre-emptive strike to be legal/justified, the threat must be demonstrably “instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation”.

The recent strikes on Iran fail this stringent, American-authored test unequivocally. According to the US’s own intelligence, the threat was not actively materialising and, with negotiations still underway, there were clearly other avenues than the use of force.

Worse, according to a Times of Israel article, the US carried out a coordinated misinformation campaign, using the negotiations, to make Iran believe a strike was not imminent. The article’s source states that Trump “played the game together with Israel […] It was a whole coordination.”

This legal vacuum is compounded by a profound lack of democratic mandate, a deficit cultivated over decades. This represents a deliberate turn away from the “rules-based order” that the US helped build. While early actions like the Korean War sought a UN Security Council mandate, since 2003........

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