Iran’s regime is vile, but what Trump and Netanyahu have done is a war crime |
Iran’s regime is vile, but what Trump and Netanyahu have done is a war crime
March 3, 2026 — 7:30pm
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In a lawless world, it may seem idle to judge the conduct of leaders like Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu by international rules to which they are indifferent. But those who use their power to invade other countries commit what the judgment at Nuremberg described as the supreme war crime — that of aggression — because they bear responsibility for all the death and dismemberment that war inevitably entails, for civilians as well as soldiers.
Leaders are entitled to invade only in self-defence — the excuse proffered by the United States and Israel in Monday’s Security Council debate — or with the approval of that Council (which it withheld) or else, as in the case of Kosovo, without such approval where the right of humanitarian intervention arises.
Trump is not a humanitarian, and neither aggressor has sought to defend itself on this ground. But might it have been open to some more respectable “coalition of the willing” to do so?
It is necessary first to dispose of the pretence of “pre-emptive self-defence”, that perversion of international law invented by the Bush administration to justify its attack on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003 and used by Vladimir Putin to justify his invasion of Ukraine. It was used by both Israel........