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U.S. State Department Legal Adviser Says Iran War Justified by Tehran's "Aggression" over Decades
(State Department) Reed D. Rubinstein - On Feb. 28, the U.S. Armed Forces launched Operation Epic Fury to "destroy Iranian offensive missiles, destroy Iranian missile production, destroy [Iran's] navy and other security infrastructure," and, finally, ensure that Iran "will never have nuclear weapons." The U.S. is acting well within the recognized contours of international law relating to the use of force and self-defense. This legal assessment is grounded in facts demonstrating Iran's malign aggression over decades, particularly in Iran's escalatory attacks against the U.S., Israel, and others in the region for years, and that continues to this day. Between 2021 and 2024, there were well over 100 attacks against U.S. personnel and facilities in Iraq and Syria by the IRGC and its partners and proxies. Beginning with its founding in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has regularly attacked the U.S., its interests, and its allies. The regime's "revolutionary" Islamic ideology has been the justification for its decades-long pattern and practice of international terrorism and military adventurism, as well as its multibillion-dollar investments in developing the "Axis of Resistance" and ballistic missile, drone, and nuclear capabilities. Accordingly, the U.S. had an independent legal justification to enter into the conflict. Defensive U.S. actions could equally have been considered part of an ongoing international armed conflict between Iran and the U.S. itself, in which the U.S. was exercising its own, individual right of self-defense. Any assessment of the imminence, gravity, and scope of the threat posed by the Iranian regime would need to account for the decades of consistently malign foreign and domestic conduct and the dangerous and destabilizing risks of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in Iran's hands. Any legal analysis for determining the imminence of an attack and the proportionality of a potential response should account for the immense destructive power of nuclear weapons and the danger posed by ballistic delivery systems. The fact that these weapons are often developed in secret magnifies the potential danger to other states.