Jus in Bello is the body of law governing how a war is fought during that armed conflict. The primary aim is to limit the suffering of the non-combatants – civilians, medics, and wounded soldiers no longer in the fight. The key principles of Jus in Bello are distinction, proportionality, and necessity. On February 28, 2026, the US and Israel began an armed conflict against Iran. In reply, Iran has launched missile and drone attacks against civilian targets – itself a war crime. Iran asserts, contentiously, that there are no civilians in Israel. Within this calculus, Iran has attacked Israel with missiles, including the use of cluster bombs, prohibited by over 110 countries under the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions.

The timing and the intensity of these attacks matter. Strategically, such actions have little chance of tipping the conflict in Iran’s favor. Iran’s missile attacks against the Israeli population are weapons of terror, not weapons of serious mortality. Each lost life matters enormously, but what is the actual risk of death, and how effective are bombing campaigns in breaking the resolve of the people under attack? In modern conflicts, bombing alone has classically been regarded as failing to win wars, but Iran may have no intention of “winning” in the classical sense.

Consider the Nazi V-1 bombing of the city of London. This campaign began on June 13, 1944, – one week after D-Day- and lasted until March 29, 1945. In late June 1944, as many as 100 missiles targeted London per day.  Approximately 2,400-2,500 missiles hit the city of London and caused 6,184 fatalities. As a rough estimate, each bomb killed 2.5 people. In 1939, the population........

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