Liberal supporters of the US-Israeli killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are straining to parry the charge that Operation Epic Fury is illegal. They say that Washington and Jerusalem are returning fire in a continuing war initiated by Iran, which has funded proxy terror organisations to target Americans and Israelis. It’s a good try but once you kill a country’s head of state in a targeted bombing, it’s hard to claim regime change wasn’t the object of the exercise. 

If international law says Khamenei should still be in place, maybe international law deserves to be detonated along with him

If international law says Khamenei should still be in place, maybe international law deserves to be detonated along with him

Customary international law, as commonly understood, does not permit the violation of another state’s sovereignty to change its government by force. There is a body of opinion that finds the responsibility to protect insufficient and believes there must be licit grounds on which to remove tyrants who oppress their own people and pose a threat to other nations. 

If ever there was an action that bolstered the case for a ‘right to regime change’ it is surely Iran. The Islamic republic is a total tyranny in which the structure of government makes regime change in a liberal or democratic direction almost........

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