The recent violent assault on Iranian sovereignty by the US-Zionist entity marks an escalation in the ongoing hybrid warfare against the Islamic Republic. This operation must be understood as a continuum, building upon previous measures, such as military aggression, targeted assassinations, crippling economic sanctions, ongoing psychological warfare, mass misinformation campaigns, and the persistent threat of further military action. These imperial tactics work in tandem to create an environment of instability and distress within Iranian society, economy, and politics, severely impacting the daily lives and well-being of the people and the social cohesion of the society.
In the latest phase, the US has hijacked and appropriated domestic protests in Iran—many of which express legitimate grievances over economic conditions caused by sanctions and neoliberal policies—making them a central component of its regime change strategy. This imperialist hijacking effectively represses the Iranian people’s right to engage in legitimate protest, as demonstrated recently by the largest labor protest at the South Pars Gas Refinery, where union leaders successfully protected Iran’s labor movement from foreign appropriation. However, protests lacking the same level of organized structure and political expression are far more vulnerable to hijacking, with their core demands often obscured by external actors with imperial agendas. Over the last few weeks, covertly trained agents, embedded within peaceful demonstrations, have incited violence and executed barbaric acts, such as publicly beheading police officers, while attacking vital institutions and civilian buildings, including hospitals, banks, and mosques. These actions are part of a coordinated, systemic effort to erode Iran’s sovereignty, which continues to serve as a cornerstone of resistance against Zionist genocide and its colonial expansion in West Asia, providing material support to anti-colonial liberation forces and movements in the region. Despite the staggering scale of this US-Zionist interference, the tactics employed are hardly new. These violent operations are merely the latest in a long history of imperial interventions aimed at destabilizing Iran and controlling and looting its resources, drawn directly from the same playbook of aggression and subversion that the West has used against the country for decades.
A legal assessment of the recent violent operations against Iranian sovereignty is essential, yet it is equally crucial to recognize the glaring abandonment of any pretense of legal justification for such actions. Historically, imperial powers have at least attempted, albeit with weak and transparent arguments, to ground their interventions in international law. Prior to October 7th, 2023, they feigned compliance with legal norms, however flimsy. However, the Palestinian anti-colonial Operation Al-Aqsa Flood has delivered a powerful gift to the world: it has stripped these imperial forces of their liberal legal mask. The US and its Zionist proxies have discarded all pretense, revealing their fascist and colonial violence with impunity. It is nonetheless important, for political and historical reasons to asses the legality of US-Zionist interventions against Iranian sovereignty.
Violations of International Law
The recent operations orchestrated by the United States and its Zionist proxy against Iran illustrate several flagrant violations of fundamental principles enshrined in international law, most notably the principle of non-intervention. These breaches represent not only a disregard for the sovereignty of Iran but also a broader erosion of the most fundamental tenets of international legal order.
The principle of non-intervention, a cornerstone of customary international law, upholds that each sovereign state retains the right to conduct its internal and external affairs without external interference. This principle safeguards the territorial integrity and political independence of states by delineating their sovereign domains. It is codified in Articles 2(4) and 2(7) of the UN Charter, which prohibit, respectively, the use or threat of force against the territory of another state and the intervention of the United Nations in matters that fall within the domestic jurisdiction of any state. The only exception to this rule is found in Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which permits enforcement measures under specific conditions, such as in cases of threats to international peace and security.
In the case of Iran, US-Zionist interference in domestic protests constitutes a direct violation of the principle of non-intervention. The leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, has publicly acknowledged foreign involvement, stating in a recent speech: “He [the US President] said it openly, he spoke openly, and he encouraged it openly. We have much documented evidence showing they helped [the rioters and terrorists] – both them and the Zionist regime. They helped them, and I will briefly elaborate on that as well. We find the US President guilty of inflicting these casualties and damages on the Iranian nation and of slandering the people.” The US and Israeli officials also publicly boasted their interventions. Mike Pompeo, former US Secretary of State, tweeted: “Happy new year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them.” Similarly, an Israeli minister, Amichai Eliyahu, said, “Our people are working there right now.” These explicit acknowledgments of foreign interference in Iran’s internal affairs constitute a clear breach of the country's sovereignty and are emblematic of the disregard for the foundational principle of non-intervention in international law.
The US government has also publicly endorsed this interference. The US President, in a series of remarks, declared, “It’s time to look for new leadership in Iran.” and that the United States will “hit them [Iran] very hard” threatening Iran in light of the street violence. This rhetoric not only undermines Iran’s political autonomy but also explicitly violates the principle of non-intervention, interfering in domestic affairs of a sovereign nation, and threatening its sitting officials and leader of the nation, by openly calling for regime change in a sovereign state.
In violation of the prohibition on the threat or use of force against the sovereignty of another state, enshrined in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, the United States has explicitly threatened military action against Iran’s territorial integrity and political independence stating that the US would be “hitting them very hard” if Iranian leaders were to harm protesters. This is, of course, in the backdrop of the 12-day war of aggression in blatant violation of 2(4) against Iranian sovereignty earlier in June, sustained attacks on Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine with complete legal impunity in the existing international legal courts.
As US officials claim to be saving Iranians from their own government, American people are not recognized as political subjects by the state. Students across US universities are systematically repressed, expelled, and threatened, for protesting the genocide that the US actively arms and funds. Demonstrators are killed by police in the streets, while police brutality and racialized violence against immigrants have become the grim reality on the ground. Despite widespread condemnation, these acts of violence and systemic repression have made no impact on the government's conduct.
Furthermore, while US officials promise "freedom" for Iranians after their attempt to toppling the Iranian government, they have just completed the sale of looted Venezuelan oil, worth $500 million, following their successful regime change operation against the Venezuelan people in recent weeks.
A New International Legal Order
The inability of existing international legal institutions to hold the United States accountable for its crimes against the people resisting US violence, is not an abstract failure of law; it is the expression of international law’s entanglement with imperial and colonial power. To continue framing US-Zionist crimes, from genocide to aggressions, and interventions as merely “illegal” risks naturalizing the very structures that enable it. What is required is recognition that existing international legal system has historically been an instrument of domination, and that emancipation depends upon transcending the imperial order it sustains.
A serious legal assessment of the recent violence unleashed in Iranian streets against the country’s sovereignty within the current international legal framework must not only recognize but also engage with: (1) the collapse of the post-1945 international legal order and the West’s official exit from it, and (2) the structural incapacity of the existing legal system to provide mechanisms of accountability, redress, and reparation. This leads to the pressing need for (3) a new legal order that centers mechanisms for accountability, particularly in relation to crimes of colonialism and imperialism.
Ayatollah Khamenei has called for the prosecution of the US President, holding him accountable for the crimes committed against the Iranian nation. Yet, the existing international legal institutions lack both the structural capacity and political will to hold the United States accountable for its violations of international law.
Despite the ICC’s arrest warrants against Zionist criminals such as Netanyahu and Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the use of starvation as a method of warfare, both remain at large, continuing to perpetuate genocide with US backing. This is while the US has kidnapped the sitting president of Venezuela without any legal justification or authority, in clear violation of international legal norms, including the immunity of foreign officials.
Real accountability will not emanate from The Hague, whose authority has been compromised by its structural entanglement with imperial power. The International Court of Justice is incapable of enforcing its judgments absent the consent/ power of states, and the International Criminal Court operates under jurisdictional limitations shaped by the very powers complicit in genocide. As long as Israel remains seated in the General Assembly and the US veto holds the Security Council hostage, these institutions cannot be treated as credible arbiters of justice. A reconstitution of the international order is necessary — one that abolishes the veto structure and centers the voices of the colonized and formerly colonized.
This is where the praxis of armed resistance becomes legally and politically indispensable. Critical scholars have long emphasized that even the most powerful states veil their violence in the language of legality. October 7th, however, marked a rupture. It stripped away the liberal-democratic façade and revealed the naked force of empire. From that moment, the question was forced: will the West preserve its legal mask, or will it reveal itself as fascist, genocidal, rooted in the very colonial violence international law claimed to abolish? In its choice, the mask has slipped.
Against this background, the resistance movements of West Asia, led by Palestinian Resistance and materially and logistically supported by Iran, must be understood not only as lawful but also as global agents standing against the complete destruction of humanity, which is being driven by the United States and its military proxies in West Asia. These movements fulfill both the right of peoples to resist occupation and the collective duty to prevent genocide. All attacks on Iranian sovereignty must also be understood within this context.
Iran, Palestine, Hezbollah, Ansarullah, Hamas, are not only legitimate actors under international law; they are necessary. Their resistance constitutes the material basis for the emergence of a new international legal order. One that will not be legislated in the Security Council chambers of New York, but born in Gaza, in Beirut, in Sanaa, in Tehran — wherever peoples resist extermination and affirm life against the brutality of the Empire.
(The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Khamenei.ir.)
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