As Security Council Stalls, There Are Other Ways to Stop US-Israeli War on Iran |
Did you know that Truthout is a nonprofit and independently funded by readers like you? If you value what we do, please support our work with a donation.
Already 555 Iranians — including 180 students at a girls’ elementary school in Minab — have been reported dead in the war of aggression launched February 28 by President Donald Trump and his accomplice, accused war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, against Iran.
“Operation Epic Fury involves the largest regional concentration of American military firepower in a generation,” U.S. Central Command said in a statement.
This aggression has destabilized the region and triggered Iran’s legitimate exercise of self-defense.
The U.S.-Israeli aggression against Iran violates the United Nations Charter, which requires that all states settle their disputes peacefully and refrain from the use of armed force except in self-defense under Article 51 after an armed attack against a UN state by another state, or when the Security Council authorizes it.
Before February 28, Iran had not mounted an armed attack against any country, nor did it pose an imminent threat to the U.S., Israel, or another UN member state. And the Security Council had not authorized the use of military force against Iran.
Under UN Charter, Iran’s Attack Was a Legal Response to Israel’s Illegal Attack
The timing of the U.S.-Israeli attacks undermines the pretext that the U.S. and Israel had been engaging in good-faith negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.
Netanyahu Convinced Trump to Withdraw From the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2017
Trump claimed he attacked Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.
The negotiations preceding the February 28 attack must be examined in the context of the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), that was negotiated by France, Britain, Russia, China, Germany, the U.S., and Iran during the Obama administration.
In the JCPOA, Iran agreed to restrict its uranium enrichment and other nuclear activities. In return, the U.S. unfroze billions of dollars in Iranian assets to provide relief from punishing sanctions. Until Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal during his first administration, the JCPOA had been working to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
“Iran has gotten rid of all of its highly enriched uranium,” Jessica T. Mathews wrote in an 2017 article in The New York Review. “It has also eliminated 99 percent of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium…. All enrichment has been shut down at the once-secret, fortified, underground facility at Fordow.… Iran has disabled and poured concrete into the core of its plutonium reactor — thus shutting down the plutonium as well as the uranium route to nuclear weapons. It has provided adequate answers to the [International Atomic Energy Agency’s] long-standing list of questions regarding past weapons-related activities.”
Nevertheless, in 2017, Netanyahu convinced Trump to withdraw the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal. “I asked [Trump] to leave the JCPOA,” Netanyahu bragged. “It was me who made him to depart from the deal.”
Had the JCPOA remained in force, the current U.S.-Israeli aggression would almost certainly not have happened.
Negotiations Were Bearing Fruit But U.S. and Israel Attacked Anyway
Before the February 28 U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, the country of Oman had been brokering negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. The U.S. and Israel insisted that Iran stop enriching uranium, limit its ballistic missile program, and end support for its “proxies” Hezbollah and the Houthis.
On February 27, Oman’s foreign minister said on CBS News that the negotiations had made significant progress and Iran had agreed to more concessions than those contained in the JCPOA. A nuclear agreement was “within our reach,” he stated.
Nevertheless, Trump maintained that diplomacy had been exhausted. The U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran the next day.
In his videotaped announcement, Trump misleadingly stated that the Iranian government has “rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions.”
Citing no evidence, Trump declared that the Iranian regime “has built nuclear weapons.” This contradicted his declaration in June 2025 after his bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites that the U.S. had “obliterated” its nuclear program.
Israel erroneously stated that Iran is armed with nuclear weapons. For the past two decades, Israel has claimed that Iran was on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Trump said that in order to avoid a war, Iran would have had to say “those secret words: ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon.’” But Iran has stated this several times. In fact, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa banning nuclear weapons in 2004.
The Trump administration has admitted it has no evidence Iran is weaponizing its uranium enrichment........