Special - International Law and the War on Iran w/ Maryam Jamshidi

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Hello American Prestige listeners, it's Derek and I am pleased to welcome back to the program, maybe not under the circumstances, but just to have her here.

Mary M. Gemciti, she is associate professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School.

She specializes in international law, foreign policy law, national security law.

She's been on the program before.

She is our NATSEC legal desk, I suppose, on American Prestige.

So, Mary M. Thank you so much for coming back on the program.

Thank you for having me, albeit, under these unfortunate circumstances.

I'm still glad to be here, though.

Yes, I want to talk about the unfortunate circumstances, but before we do that, let's discuss the strictly legal aspects or illegal aspects as the case may be of the US-Israeli war on Iran.

And just to kind of lay the groundwork here, can you explain to me what legal case these people have made for this war?

Because it is, and we can talk about the extent to which they've just kind of fumbled their homework or not done any work at all.

But they have at least made motions in the direction of a legal argument here, and I'm baffled by it because it changes from person to person, and it's, you know, like they've gone through a bunch of different iterations of it.

But as you've been able to parse what the administration is saying, why are they arguing that this was a justified military action?

I mean, these arguments are all over the place, and they are clearly an afterthought.

As you mentioned, they often people are contradicting one another in terms of the arguments that they are presenting and trying to justify this as a legal matter.

I mean, it seems like there are a couple of different arguments as far as I can tell, maybe three broad arguments.

The first is that Iran was about to attack Israel, or alternative Israel was about to attack Iran, and that Iran in response was going to attack both Israel and the United States.

So the United States needed to preempt that.

The other version, as far as I can tell, is that Iran was about to attack the United States, and so the United States needed to preempt that.

And then the other one, which I think has been the most consistent, is that this was necessary in order to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, which, you know, Donald Trump had claimed to obliterate Iran's nuclear program in June.

And its own intelligence agency said that Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon, but nevertheless that Iran, this was necessary in order to prevent Iran from developing its nuclear weapon.

And as part of that, it was necessary to strike at Iran's ballistic missile capabilities and drone capabilities because Iran was going to use those as cover to create a nuclear weapon and prevent anyone from doing anything about it.

So as you can tell from all of these descriptions, these are all very complicated, hard to believe arguments that the administration has tried to piece together to justify this.

I mean, on the Israel is about is going to strike Iran, and then Iran is going to return to an unprovoked attack by somebody else.

Right. Right. I mean, you know, there are many levels of speculation behind that, you know, that, you know, problematically start with Israel launching an illegal and unjustified war against the United States.

You know, again, the notion that Iran was going to attack the US separate apart from that, they provide no evidence for any of those, right, fundamentally.

And the thing that really makes it all hilarious and ridiculous and impossible to believe is that for weeks, Trump was threatening to attack Iran if Iran did not agree to a deal on the United States's terms.

So basically, unless Iran capitulated to what the United States wanted from Iran, which included no enrichment at all of uranium, which Iran is entitled to do under the nuclear nonfluriferation tree, they can enrich or uranium, it just can't create a weapon.

The other one was that they would be basically dismantled or significantly restrict their ballistic missile program. Again, this is Iran's basically only defensive capability that the United States wanted it to give up.

And finally, that it and all support for its regional allies, resistance groups that are trying to prevent Israel from either incur occupying their land as in Lebanon or trying to resist ongoing occupation and colonization and Palestine.

These were the things that the United States expected Iran to agree to completely, you know.

And if Iran didn't agree to this, Donald Trump may very clear he was going to attack and he to prove that he was serious, he deployed massive amounts of military assets to the United States already has massive amounts of military assets in the region, it has many, many military bases.

But on top of that, he sent destroyers, all sorts of airplanes, all sorts of other assets to the region over the course of several weeks.

Two aircraft carriers. I mean, really, like two aircraft carrier groups to position the United States.

I think there's a third one heading there now. I like that.

Yeah, that's what I've heard as well.

They deal with this.

To position the United States in a way that its threats would be meaningful, you know, so to now then say that the United States somehow had the right to self defense after threatening Iran, which is itself a violation of the US charter with force backing that up with the deployment of so many troops and assets for the region is, you know, laughable.

That's certainly not going to be a basis.

Oh, Iran might have struck us because frankly, Iran would have probably had a right to to preemptively attack the United States and Israel, especially the United States given those threats.

And then the nuclear argument is similarly, the awful for laughable for reasons that I mentioned a, the United States is own claim that Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity had been destroyed in June.

And multiple pieces of evidence, including from US intelligence that Iran wasn't enriching uranium.

And they're in connection with that was not in the process of developing any kind of nuclear weapons. So there is no plausible legal justification of any kind for what the United States and Israel did to Iran starting on February 28th.

The demand that Iran basically cap its ballistic missile for like that, that went to me sticks out because you can.

Yeah, I mean, under the NPT, if you have a suspicion that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, which again there wasn't one, but if you have one, that's a legitimate concern.

But I mean, there's nothing about not having missiles that can go over what, you know, 1,500 kilometers or whatever the cap was.

And basically just like the the limit being you can't have any missiles that can reach Israel. So the Israeli military can can bomb Iran with impunity without any fear of retaliation.

Like there's just no justification for that, right? Like there's no exception to, you know, the law of self defense that says Iran is not entitled to defend itself.

Right. I mean, none of those, there are only two grounds legally that, you know, you can go to war.

You know, one is because you have the right of self defense because you've been attacked a mothally or where the security council under its chapter seven powers green lights at use of force.

We clearly don't have a chapter seven authorization here. And as I mentioned, you know, the United States and Israel have no plausible argument on self defense and this notion that the nuclear weapons issue.

Somehow created a plausible right to self defense for either Israel or the United States is crazy. The right to self defense is the right to respond to ongoing attack or imminent attacks at most.

It's not about forecasting into the future. God knows how far into the future that maybe one day, maybe the state might do something that constitutes an armed aggression against you.

That is not the standard, you know, that is with the standard that maybe the United States and Israel want us to believe is the standard, but it certainly isn't.

And again, there's also no evidence that Iran wanted before this war, things have probably changed now, wanted to even develop a nuclear weapon.

You know, so there's just so many pieces of this ridiculous, you know, scenario they've put out there that just falls apart on even like the tiniest bit of scrutiny.

You know, and the ballistic missile stuff, you know, like this negotiating position that like you need to now give up your ballistic missile capability is not new.

You know, Israel has been pushing it for a while, but you know, to imagine that is that a country like Iran that was just attacked, you know, quite brutally and again, illegally by Israel, the United States in June in the midst of nuclear negotiations.

Would somehow agree, you know, to give up the only assets it has, you know, that protect it in any way from the format to very aggressive neighbor Israel and its close ally the United States, you know, was crazy.

And I don't even think the United States, you know, the only way the United States thought it could get that was by threatening force and now by launching war, which, you know, should demonstrate how ridiculous from a political standpoint that demand was.

Right. Disarm yourself. We're going to go. We're going to attack you.

Exactly. Yeah. Of course, who wouldn't say yes to that? Right.

What you're describing has echoes to me of the lead up to the Iraq war in the sense that this argument about some nebulous threat in the future that we can't really define for you.

We don't know when it might be, you know, actualized, but it's out there and we have to be worried about it was the same argument that we were making about Iraq's, you know, alleged nuclear weapons program.

And it crosses from preemptive war, which you can make an argument in some situations, this legitimate, like if Iran had preemptively attacked the two US aircraft carrier groups that were preparing to attack it.

But it crosses from that into like preventative war, which, you know, there really is no basis for launching a preventative war. But I guess this is leading into my question, which is in the case of the Iraq war to make that argument.

We got months of brow beating from the Bush administration about the threat of Saddam Hussein, the dangers is ties to al-Qaeda and his weapons of mass destruction.

With this, we got like a week of Donald Trump occasionally popping up. Like the state of the Union address was a couple of days before he launched this war.

He barely mentioned Iran at all in the state of the Union address, like days away from what he was planning to do.

It's just surprising to me how little effort they put into making a legal, a justifying argument for this ahead of time.

And now it feels to some degree like they are surprised that they're even being asked a question of legality or justification.

And they're sort of slapping it together after the fact. Have you taken, like is that sort of your impression as well or what do you make of, like this being treated almost as an afterthought?

Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right, at least like as horrifying and illegal as the US invasion and occupation of Iraq was.

At least they tried, at least they tried to make the legal case both to the American public as well as to the United Nations as well as at the Security Council.

You know, they did try and get support from the international community for what they wanted to do.

The international community saw saw through it and didn't buy it and was actually far more vociferous and very clear eyed in its opposition to what the Bush administration is doing.

Then frankly, I think what we're seeing now, at least from the Canadians, the Australians and the Western Europeans.

But like, you know, there was some effort to put together a PR campaign that centered around the legal justification for this.

And also talking just about the domestic scenario that they got an authorization for the use of military force from Congress for what they did in Iraq.

So like, you know, I'm not again trying to legitimize anything that happens.

But at least an effort was made both the domestic level and the international level to try and present what they wanted to do as being within the bounds of the law.

Here, I mean, they could care less. I mean, a lot of this feels like an afterthought.

In some ways, the attack against Iran feels like an afterthought as well.

You know, obviously what happened in June happened. And I think that opened a Pandora's box of possibilities as far as Donald Trump was concerned.

You know, he waited to see what Israel was doing, waited to see if it was succeeding.

And when he thought it was succeeding, he wanted a piece of that success.

And so he dropped the bombs on the foredown nuclear site. Right.

And then claimed immediate success. The war was over and the Iranians agreed to it. I think to their significant regret at this point that they agreed to that ceasefire.

And on the wings of that success, you know, coupled with the success in Venezuela, with the the ousting and arrest of Maduro and the, you know, now compliant.

Delsey Rodriguez administration that is effectively it seems like doing whatever Trump Trump wanted. I think those two things together.

Coupled with a very aggressive Benjamin Netanyahu who, you know, wants to take Iran down in this moment where he feels Iran is at his weakest point, really got Donald Trump on, on side when it comes to this stuff.

And of course, the domestic protest in Iran contributed as well to his sort of ego maniacal fantasy about, you know, saving the Iranian people and ending the Iranian revolution.

So it doesn't, I mean, I don't know. I don't have, you know, any insight into US military planning, but it doesn't feel like this was planned for very long.

It feels like it feels like this was planned maybe for a couple of weeks, maybe for a couple of months, maybe from December, maybe, you know, the Iranians have been planning for this since June.

Maybe the Israelis have to, but I don't get the impression the Americans have been planning for it for very long.

So in some sense, like, there's no legal justification because I don't really think they've been, this has been on, you know, part of the plan for all that long.

But at the same time, even if it was, this is not an administration, you know, like shot shots will shock many people to hear me say they cares very much about what the law says or whether or not the law is constraining.

Certainly from an international standpoint, they don't care at all. Their project is to dismantle the international system politically and legally to basically, you know, make international law.

You know, a hollow it out completely or eliminated in all its aspects, you know, so why would they think at all about the international law restrictions on what they do.

They have made it very clear that I think international law does nothing other than hold America back from its, you know, inherent birthright of dominating the entire world.

So, you know, I'm not so surprised that there's been no legal arguments presented, even if they had been playing this for a while because like their entire political project is, you know, contrary to the existence of international, international legal regime.

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So I want to ask about one incident in particular because I think it's indicative of the way a lot of people are talking about this war and the hypocrisy of the way it's being communicated to people.

And that's the Israeli strike over the weekend on Tehran. They hit a number of fuel depots kind of on the outskirts of the city lighting them on fire sending toxic gas smoke into the air that's now been raining down as acid rain for a couple of days that people have been advised to stay inside.

They're going to be health impacts. It's viewed oil everywhere set fires that I think may still be burning in a couple of cases just I mean the videos that I saw were apocalyptic.

And the Israeli justification for this from, you know, at least quasi legal perspective is that these were IRGC fuel depots so they're legitimate military target.

But surely blowing them up and gassing the city of Tehran with millions of civilians living there cannot possibly be a justifiable act right like what is the legal what are the legal considerations there I guess.

So if you're so this is assuming that though that oil depots the little oil depots were in fact military objectives I mean there's been a lot of reporting suggesting that they were not they were civilian oil depots used you know for the benefit of the people living inside.

Tehran and the suburb of cat edge but if they were military objectives then as part of the assessment of whether or not they should be targeted the Israeli should have assessed for proportionality so the requirement of you know of proportionality basically is that like you know if you are going to attack a military objective.

And that attack its consequences will result in civilian casualties or destruction of civilian objects that is excessive as compared to the military advantage of the strike then you can't do the strike.

So if these were IRGC oil depots they would have had to assess okay what are the good with the consequences going to be right for the civilian population in these areas of us engaging in this strike.

And I don't know how of depriving the IRGC of this oil right like that's the objective right now IRGC doesn't have this oil is that objective so valuable.

That it outweighs the expected civilian harm I mean the level of civilian harm that has and will result from this is so immense that it is hard to think of any military advantage that would actually rise the level of justifying something like this I mean you saw the videos I saw the videos I spoke to family inside Iran I mean the

air was un breathable it remains un breathable there's already pretty bad pollution into for a variety of different reasons this is just taking it into the stratosphere not to mention the ways the water is being polluted the way the land is being polluted the carcinogens that are now in the air right that can cause God knows what kinds of illnesses down the line you know people.

I mean no exaggeration to say like this is yeah we're maybe you're talking about years of damage right for the sake of depriving the IRGC of a couple of oil depots there are other you know I'm sure without it out other oil resources that they can access you know this is your Iran's largest city this is the most densely populated city to target oil depots in this city and on its outsourced is to impact the lives of tens of millions of people.

And really detrimental ways it is the definition of a disproportionate attack again assuming this was even a military objective it seems like it was a civilian objective which we've made it's deliberate strike it felt completely unlawful and a war crime.

So you know it is you know but it is one great example you know of the modus operandi both of Israel and of the United States they are both very well experienced they have

they have demonstrated their desire and their inclination to attack these kinds of sites in the past as well this is another reminder that the what it comes to the laws of war when it comes the law surrounding you know military combat unfortunately the United States and Israel are do little other than violate those terms and try to reset them in ways that make war far more dangerous and far more deadly for civilians.

So my last strictly legal question in the interest of fair play I guess I do feel like I need to ask you about the Iranian reaction the decision to target the Gulf States and initially US facilities military facilities in the Gulf States which seems pretty straightforward but then to expand that package beyond the targeting package beyond that.

Yeah what can we say in terms of the legitimacy of of what the Iranians have been doing here.

Yeah so I mean the military bases you know in those countries are you know it's lawful to target them you know if they were involved in certainly if they were directly involved in the attacks by Israel and Iran.

Sorry I say Israel and Israel in the United States against Iran but arguably even if they were indirectly involved so for example if they were providing intelligence surveillance and things like that.

Now you know beyond the bases of course the question is like you know what about all those other assets beyond the bases that Iran has allegedly attacked I mean some of them.

Iran has claimed and there seems to be some reporting backing it up that some of those other assets were assets that were housing like military personnel that had been moved from those bases to those civilian structures like hotels which would you know arguably make them targetable again you know those individuals and their involvement in the attack would be you know

you know relevant piece of information but broadly speaking you know if you target proportionality would would apply there to right in terms of yeah I mean I would say it would the United States and Israel treat you know for example if there's a apartment building that has like a soldier in it you know or an apartment building where you know weapons are being held.

The US and Israel will treat that entire apartment building as a lawful military objective and they will not engage in proportionality but that is arguably an outlier position and the correct position is that you should still engage in proportionality analysis so you should

you know do what I just describe with respect to the oil depots evaluate the military advantage in striking the sort of military asset in the apartment and evaluate that against the expected civilian losses that will result from the strike and if it's disproportionate in terms of those losses then you should engage in the strike.

So you know there have been hits against some hotels again that some soldiers were apparently in in an UAE I believe they were actually like intelligence personnel like so they were operating intelligence stations out of some of these hotels maybe maybe it was also in commercial spaces I can't remember but you know those would seem to be you know Iran would seem to have a credible argument that those will lawful strikes.

I mean we could at least say it's a gray area it gets a it gets harder when we're talking about oil facilities and you know the oil facilities the ones I'm most familiar with I don't know if they've been hitting you know other kinds of civilian structures I guess they have been the airports as well.

They are ports the oil facilities is the ones that come to mind right now closing the straight up moves I know it's just been reported today they might be mining it like that where does that kind of fall in this.

So I mean the street of poor music issues a little bit more complicated it's an international waterway so there are certain rules that govern the international waterways that are different from the rules that govern territorial waterways but you know like if we're thinking about

the response on the you know territory of these of these other states once it starts leaving the realm of you know faces and potential civilian structures where military personnel have been moved or military activity is happening once we move past that then we get into the space of sort of unlawful on lawful strikes.

So Iran's hands are not clean here either I would say though that when we're looking at the totality of violations we're looking at you know broadly the legality versus illegality of actions taken by both sides you know Israel and the United States started an illegal war you know like everything they do is basically a lawful I mean the laws of war governing what they actually do during the conduct or separate from the laws governing the law.

The laws governing the actual initiation of the attack but you can't get away from the fact that that initial illegality can never be remedied right it can they can attack only military objectives inside Iran their law their war is illegal period right Iran has a right to self defense and it has a right to attack those bases and those are are you know those are legal has it gone beyond that probably on on the overall assessment

Israel and the United States have committed far more in terms of illegal acts and war crimes I think than the Iran House so right I mean I would say like everything flows from that first decision to launch an illegal war and then to make it feel at least like an existential conflict for the Iranians under which like international law is not going to be top of mind for anybody in in the decision making process if they feel like this is you know the end of end of the line if they don't want to do that.

Resist in the you know harshest way possible it all flows from the US and Israeli conduct it seems to me yeah it does I mean you know those you know states certainly you know once Iran strikes start going beyond bases you know like if they rise those strikes rise the level what what we call an armed attack you know they have a right to self defense it's not a right to self defense that the United States can exercise on their

behalf but you know but those states could act collectively to respond or on their own to respond to what Iran has done other states if they have been so requested can come to the collective self defense of those states but Israel and the United States absolutely cannot because they're the aggressors.

So Maryam I want to give you the space here I mean you mentioned speaking to family in Tehran I know you know you're from Iran you you have family there you've been sharing I saw on on social media pictures of Tehran under happier circumstances and you know just sort of trying to talk about the city and you're your country that you know that you're the country that you know when it's not being attacked by by the US.

Israel and so I didn't want to just do a strictly legal discussion here I wanted to give you some time at the end to sort of share your thoughts and and to you know kind of overall impressions I guess as this is unfolding.

I mean you know I don't think that there are any winners in war I'm sorry to say something so tight but you know the this has been framed by a lot of Iranians as well as a war that's you know going to help the Iranian people liberate themselves from the Islamic Republic and you know it's it was hard to see that to see how that would possibly happen.

Before the war was launched and I think the last 10 days 11 days have just demonstrated how naive and misguided those views were you know the Internet has been totally cut off so it's very hard for people from inside the country to reach out it's hard for us here to reach family inside.

It's hard to even call them lines from outside of Iran so you know we kind of wait for our families to contact us so we can hear about how they're doing.

You know back in June a lot of people left everyone they went to other parts of the country that seemed safer and you know they probably were safer and then Tehran was then as a now Tehran really for the brunt of the attacks but now at least like you know if you're from anywhere on the western side or the central part of Iran like nowhere is safe you know I have family.

In other parts of Iran as well but they're all on the western and central side of Iran you know so there's nowhere to really flee to either you know like if you are in Tehran or if you're in Urumia or if you're in Cheetos or if you're in Espahan like there's not really anywhere else.

You can or would go to and some people have left Tehran in particular but I don't get the impression that lots of people have left is specifically because of this this issue of like where would you really go.

You know Iran has been under you know some of the most extreme sanctions any countries ever experienced for a very very long time it's been under a lot of political strain as well with domestic protests that have been happening.

You know intermittently over the last few years in particular earlier this year which were quite significant you know it's been under a lot of pressure from Israel in the United States not just from the economic standpoint but also from the standpoint of armed conflict you know things didn't just start on February 28th things started before even June of 2025 in terms of armed attacks against Iran.

You know and I'm really worried and I'm very scared as to where Iran goes from here who knows when this this war will end my hope is that Iran is not brought to its knees but I remain worried that even if it's not you know how do we put the pieces back together.

You know from an economic standpoint from political standpoint from a you know security standpoint you know the country is going to need to come together but unfortunately it is it is quite it's quite divided maybe this war has helped bring more people together but I doubt that that it has to the extent that needs to happen.

But that unity I think will be key to any better future for Iran going forward so I pray that you know the country will be able to pull itself up by its bootstrap so to speak and rebuild but not just from a you know material standpoint from a you know psychological standpoint as well and an emotional standpoint you know there's a lot of healing that needs to happen in Iran.

So I think we'll leave it on that now Maryam as always we're very grateful for your time thank you for coming on the program and I do wish the best to you and your family getting through this.

Thank you so much so I appreciate it.

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