The war on Iran may come to be remembered not simply as another West Asian conflict but as a symptom of something much more serious — the gradual collapse of the post-1945 international order and, with it, the re-emergence of a colonial mindset in global politics.

The United Nations (UN) was born from the ashes of World War II, a world traumatised by the devastation of total war and the horrors of genocide. Political leaders sought to build a system that could prevent the recurrence of great-power conflict, with the UN Charter serving as the foundational document of that effort, governing how States may use force under international law. In parallel, International Humanitarian Law (IHL) exists to inject a measure of humanity into the chaos of war by prohibiting collective punishment, indiscriminate attacks, targeting civilians and using starvation as a method of warfare, through the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol 1. Importantly, the applicability of IHL does not depend on the legality of the conflict; it applies equally to all parties once an armed conflict exists.

The US-Israel war against Iran raises a question........

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