UN should survive US attack. It may not

ON February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran. The opening strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, senior military commanders and civilians, including children at an elementary school in Minab. One month later, the war has spread across the Gulf, shut the Strait of Hormuz partially, and killed thousands. The US claims it acted in self-defence. That claim does not survive scrutiny.The prohibition on the use of force is the foundational norm of the post-1945 order. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter bars all member states from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. The International Court of Justice treats this prohibition as jus cogens. No derogation is permitted.The Charter allows two exceptions. The Security Council may authorise force under Chapter VII. A state may use force in individual or collective self-defence under Article 51, but only if an armed attack occurs, and only subject to the requirements of necessity and proportionality. The Security Council did not authorise this war. The entire legal case rests on Article 51.It fails on every element.Article 51 requires an armed attack. Iran had not attacked the US or Israel when the strikes began. Pentagon briefers told congressional staff on March 1 that Iran was not planning to strike US forces unless Israel attacked first. American intelligence had assessed for years that Iran halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 and had not restarted it. The IAEA confirmed it had no evidence of an organised weapons’ programme. A uranium enrichment capacity is not an armed attack. A missile programme is not an armed attack. The ICJ drew this line in the Oil Platforms case. The US itself drew it in 1981, when it joined a unanimous Security Council resolution condemning Israel's strike on Iraq's Osirak reactor. The American representative stated that the presence of military capability in a state cannot constitute a sufficient basis for the use of force.The requirement of necessity fares no better. The Caroline doctrine, which the US formulated in 1837, confines self-defence to cases where the necessity is instant and overwhelming and leaves no choice of means. On February 25, three days before the strikes, Iran's foreign minister declared publicly that a historic agreement was within reach. The Omani mediator confirmed after the attack that negotiations had been making progress. The US was conducting active diplomacy through Omani intermediaries at the moment it launched its war. A weeks-long military build-up combined with ongoing negotiations cannot satisfy the Caroline doctrine. Diplomacy had not been exhausted. Diplomacy was in progress.The attack on Iran is grossly disproportionate. Proportionality collapses on the facts. The Pentagon acknowledged deploying twice the firepower of the 2003 shock-and-awe campaign. Over 11,000 targets were struck in the first month. The campaign targeted the Head of State, the state broadcaster, parliament, universities and cultural heritage sites. Its stated aims include the destruction of Iran's entire missile capability, the annihilation of its navy and the prevention of nuclear weapons acquisition. This is not a proportionate response to any armed attack. It is a campaign of regime change and preventive disarmament.The US' Article 51 letter, submitted to the Security Council on March 10, 2026, compounds these failures. It catalogues Iranian actions stretching back to the 1979 hostage crisis as the basis for its self-defence claim. But any right of self-defence arising from 1979 expired decades ago, not least through the 1981 Algiers Accords. The US has not possessed a 47-year-old licence to use force against Iran. What the US has undertaken is preventive war: the use of force to eliminate a capability that might become a threat in the future. International law has never accepted this doctrine. The US has historically rejected it. The attempt to dress preventive war in the language of self-defence is a corruption of the Charter.One feature of this conflict deserves particular emphasis. The attack was launched during active negotiations. When a state strikes its adversary at the negotiating table, it destroys not only the negotiation but the institution of diplomacy itself. If states cannot trust that their counterparts will not attack them during talks, no future negotiation can proceed in good faith. The Omani Foreign Minister, who staked his country's credibility on mediation, concluded that the war was an attempt to reorder West Asia in Israel's favour. When the mediator reaches that conclusion, the damage extends far beyond a single conflict. To facilitate talks, Israel has reportedly had to remove two Iranian negotiators from its kill list. It is, indeed, a cause of wonder if talks do take off under such circumstances.The Security Council's response has been selective. Resolution 2817 condemned Iran's retaliatory strikes on Gulf states. It made no mention of the US-Israeli strikes that preceded and provoked them. Russia and China abstained, citing the one-sidedness. India co-sponsored the resolution. India, a country built on the principle of sovereign equality, has not condemned the strikes that started this war. History will note the silence. As the current head of the BRICS group of countries, the world would have expected greater diplomatic engagement from India.The precedent at stake is existential for the world in general and the Global South in particular. If a state may lawfully attack another on the basis of military capability and an unwelcome nuclear programme, during active diplomacy, without Security Council authorisation, and call it self-defence, then Article 2(4) ceases to mean anything. Countries without great-power alliances, without nuclear arsenals, without permanent seats on the Security Council have no protection other than the law. When the authors of that law set it aside, the weakest bear the cost.The Charter was drafted by nations that had survived total war. The powerful countries on the Security Council were expected to be altruistic hegemons who guarded peace. Its prohibition on the use of force was not aspirational.It was a survival mechanism. Whether it survives Operation Epic Fury depends on whether the international community holds the law above power. The alternative is a world Thucydides described: where the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. The Charter was written to reject that world. It still should.

UN should survive US attack. It may not

Countries without great-power alliances, without nuclear arsenals, without permanent seats on the Security Council have no protection other than the law

Sanjay Hegde

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