The Crisis in Iran and The West’s Humanitarian Shenanigans

 The military actions of the United States of America and Israel against Iran represent a wanton violation of the very idea of humanitarian intervention.

Pranay Kumar Shome

In the annals of international politics, few ideas have been as consequential as the idea of humanitarian intervention. Based on the legacy of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials following the Second World War, the idea posits that in order to avert the sufferings of targeted populations in different parts of the world who are at the receiving end of state repression or state-sponsored atrocities carried out by non-state actors, the international community has a definite role to do whatever it takes to prevent such sufferings.

Unfortunately, what the world is witnessing today in Iran is a wanton violation of the idea of humanitarian intervention in general and R2P in particular

The idea’s application gained momentum following the end of the Cold War, when the Rwandan massacre, among others, exposed the collective inertia of the West, who propounded the idea. Humanitarian intervention then sought to be institutionalized. This legal institutionalization took place via the ICISS (International Commission for State Intervention and State Sovereignty), appointed by the Canadian government in 2000. The commission propounded the R2P framework. Under this framework, states are under a legal obligation to protect their populations against genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and war crimes. At the 2005 UN World Summit, R2P, or Responsibility to Protect, was adopted.

It is in that context that the three pillars of R2P were outlined—

1. State Responsibility: Each state must protect its population from the four listed mass atrocity crimes.
2. International Assistance: The international community should help states prevent these crimes.
3. Timely and Decisive Action: If a state fails to protect its population, the international community must intervene using diplomatic, humanitarian, and other peaceful means, or, as a last resort, collective action through the UN Security Council.

Unfortunately, what the world is witnessing today in Iran is a wanton violation of the idea of humanitarian intervention in general and R2P in particular.

Violation of Iranian State Sovereignty

The holy grail of international law is that states are sovereign entities. The R2P vests the primary responsibility of protection of the population in the state. But the ongoing US-Israel military operations against Iran represent an outright violation of the Iranian state’s authority. By conducting airstrikes on a massive scale on civilian, political, and military sites, the US-Israel duo violated the Iranian state’s responsibility of protecting its people.

The strikes, however, must not be seen as an isolated incident; rather, they are a part of a grand scheme—regime change.

Regime Change, Not Protection of the Iranian People

Time and again, the West has used and abused the idea of humanitarian intervention and its legal outcome, the R2P. The latest laboratory of this pernicious Western experiment is Iran. The US government unabashedly declared that regime change was its goal in Iran. Important figures of the Trump administration declared the Islamic Republic a “terrorist regime,” “sinister force,” and “evil” without providing any evidence to substantiate their claims. They argued that their goal was to “provide freedom to the suffering humanity of Iran by ridding them of this despicable regime.”

In addition, Israel argued that its military intervention in Iran was meant to ensure that the latter can never develop nuclear weapons. A combination of regime change and fictional justification that Iran would develop nuclear weapons highlights the fact that the United States of America and Israel do not care at all about the need to adhere to international legal instruments.

The US’s main goal is to ensure that the Iranian people are deprived of their rightful leader and replace it with an individual or institution that acts as a pliant authority.

Gone With the Wind

The joint Israeli-US actions represent the flagrant violation of all three R2P pillars. First, the US argued that they were acting in defense of the Iranian people. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The demonstrations by the patriotic people of Iran against foreign interference over the past many years serve as a testimony to the fact that the Iranian state is still able to protect its people. What is all the more ironic is that, the military actions of both countries have so far contributed to the deaths of over five hundred people, including scores of innocent school children in Minab.

Second, pillar II demands that international assistance be provided to states; such assistance, if needed at all, must be diplomatic, economic, and social and clearly not unsolicited military aggression. By undertaking assassinations of key Iranian state figures, including the Supreme Leader, the US and Israel violated this pillar of R2P. Last but not least, Israel implicitly invoked pillar III by arguing that it acted in a preventive manner to preclude Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons; however, by not only being a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and subjecting itself to periodic inspections by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), Iran demonstrated that it was fully compliant with the international legal regime on the use of nuclear energy.

This shows that the United States’ actions in general and Israel’s actions in particular were not at all compliant with international law, particularly the prior authorization required under Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, as China and Russia never authorized the military actions, thereby rendering the US-Israel actions legally baseless.

Not a One-Off Incident

America’s and Israel’s actions in Iran, however, are not an isolated incident. It brings back memories of how the West, under the guise of R2P, engineered a military campaign followed by a “mass uprising” in Libya that ended up toppling the then popular Libyan head of state Muammar Gaddafi. More than a decade later, Libya and ordinary Libyans are paying the price for the West’s so-called humanitarian obsession.

Hence, it clearly demonstrates the fact that humanitarian intervention for the West is a plaything. They violate it when it suits them and invoke it selectively to defend their so-called national interests.

Pranay Kumar Shome, a research analyst who is a PhD candidate at Mahatma Gandhi Central University, Bihar, India