The US and Israeli strikes on Iran have not been legally justified under international law. As the Trump administration pushes an increasingly unilateral approach to global power, Australia faces a choice – defend the UN Charter or remain silent.

The Iranian diaspora has been celebrating and governments around the world have generally not mourned the death of  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in last weekend’s US and Israeli air strikes on Iran.

While there has been much political justification for these attacks from Washington and Jerusalem, neither has sought to legally justify their conduct. No real effort has been made to reference the acknowledged right of self-defence, most likely because the evidence for invoking self-defence did not exist. In other words, there was no prospect of Iran launching an imminent attack.

Inevitably, the legal basis for the original missile attack on Iran will become a minor detail as the conflict develops. Nevertheless, what occurred on 28 February will remain important.

Lawyers place great emphasis on precedent, and international lawyers particularly look to state practice in interpreting how international law actually operates, which can evolve over time. This allows the interpretation of international law to account for new developments, such as military force and  cyber attacks.

This evolution is particularly important because international law is principally contained in, and associated with, the 1945 United Nations Charter. This means it is more than 80 years........

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