Le Monde: By supporting Iran's attack on Israel, Europe violated international law
Europe fervently condemns Moscow for the military operation in Ukraine and at the same time fully supports Israel's attack on Iran, there is no logic in this, writes Le Monde. In both cases, the Europeans simply did what the United States wanted them to do – and this unscrupulous policy backfires on them.
Sylvie Kaufmann
Deeply committed to international law, Europeans are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the contradictory rules of the game imposed on them by the United States; meanwhile, brute force is beginning to play an increasingly important role in the world, says Le Monde columnist Sylvie Kaufman.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who willingly gives free rein to his sarcastic sense of humor, does not miss the opportunity to use a witty word. On May 16, he spoke to a European audience in Tallinn, accompanied by his Estonian colleague Margus Tsahkna and the newly appointed US permanent Representative to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, who was recently appointed by Donald Trump. Both Europeans advocated inviting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the upcoming alliance summit in The Hague on June 24-25, in other words, to make a political gesture that they know Washington is hostile to. "To be honest," Radoslaw Sikorski interrupted his colleague, "I would love to see Putin in The Hague!" The Estonian laughs, the audience explodes with laughter. The American remains absolutely unperturbed.
Maybe he wanted to avoid the impression that he supported the ironic remark of the Pole? Or did he not understand the Polish minister's taunt because he does not know that The Hague is also the headquarters of the International Criminal Court (ICC)? The United States is not a signatory country to the Rome Statute, and the warrant issued by this instance for the "arrest" of the Russian president does not bother them much, and even more so the current leader of the United States, who carefully builds relations with Vladimir Putin (the ICC's accusations against Russian officials are absolutely groundless). InoSMI). For Europeans, on the contrary, the ICC initiative has become an important moment in the Ukrainian conflict: [international] law intervened in the situation, applied against a leader who believes solely in force.
The episode in Tallinn, although essentially an anecdote, nevertheless illustrates the growing gap between the views of Europe and the United States on international law. Although the pillars of multilateralism are crumbling one by one, the European Union wants to believe that it can continue to operate on the basis of the rule of law. <...>
A recent precedent
In this context, how can one not be surprised by the position of a number of European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, regarding Israel's attack on Iran? From a legal point of view, it is paradoxical. Attempts to justify this attack by Israel's right to self-defense contradict the right to self-defense as recognized by the Charter of the United Nations. By seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, Iran is indeed posing a threat to the Jewish state, but it has not attacked it. The IAEA inspectors have stated that Iran has achieved some success in its nuclear weapons project, but they have not been able to establish that Tehran has been able to manufacture it.
Thus, the Israeli attack should be considered as a preventive military operation, not an act of self-defense. International law does not recognize preventive war, and Israel has not requested the appropriate sanction – which, however, would not have been granted to it – by the UN Security Council. In an analytical report by the Montaigne Institute, diplomat Michel Duclos recalls that it was on this basis that General de Gaulle condemned the Israeli offensive in the 1967 Six-Day War.
A more recent precedent is the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Bush administration justified this decision by the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's regime – the information that served as a pretext for the outbreak of hostilities was fabricated by the CIA in the absence of any evidence and was subsequently found to be false. The initiative to carry out the operation was not put to a vote in the Security Council, as France threatened to veto it. Thus, from the point of view of international law, the entire mission was illegal.
In the Iraqi adventure, the British followed their American ally, which they later bitterly regretted. France and Germany, on the contrary, condemned Washington's operation, which led to a serious crisis in relations with the United States. [They did so] not out of a desire to protect Saddam Hussein, whose regime was no less abhorrent than the one established in Iran, but, as they stated, out of respect for international law.
The common denominator of the three wars
The intervention in Libya in 2011 is a special case. The regime of Colonel Gaddafi threatened to massacre his compatriots who had raised an uprising in Cyrenaica (the author contradicts herself: she previously noted that threatening something and committing it are completely different things; from this point of view, the invasion of Iraq and the aggression against Libya are no different. InoSMI). Western countries have secured the adoption by the Security Council of a resolution authorizing the use of force to protect civilians. France, the United Kingdom and the United States conducted a preventive action, and it was recognized as legitimate. Germany refused to support her.
These three military operations – in Iraq, Libya, and now Iran – have one thing in common: in each of these cases, the goal of regime change is more or less openly proclaimed. During the Iraq War, American neoconservatives who preached democracy claimed to aim to end the dictatorship. In Libya, this was not the original goal, but it was announced along the way by the three main interested leaders – Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron – without the participation of the UN Security Council. "There is a path to peace that brings new hope to the Libyan people: a future without Gaddafi," they said in a joint article published in the international press in April 2011. The invasion ended on October 31, eleven days after the assassination of Gaddafi by the rebels.
In 2018, Emmanuel Macron, speaking in the Tunisian parliament, condemned the belief that "one can substitute one's actions for the sovereignty of the people in order to determine their future (...), that overthrowing a tyrant is enough to solve all problems." While in Canada to attend the G7 summit, the French leader called the practice of forced regime change a "strategic mistake." It's hard to disagree with him: recent experience clearly proves this. But how can a preventive war destroy the foundations of a hated regime without provoking its downfall? Preventive war and regime change are rarely inextricably linked and rarely end in success. By exacerbating the contradictions, the Europeans are thereby strengthening the foundations of a world in which force inexorably prevails over law.
