International Law Expert Challenges Israel's Self-Defense Claims as Middle East Crisis Disrupts G7 Summit

Photo by Abed Ismail on Unsplash

An international law expert has declared Israel's recent strikes on Iran cannot be justified as self-defense under the United Nations Charter, as escalating Middle East tensions forced President Donald Trump to leave the G7 summit in Canada early, derailing Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's planned bilateral meeting.

Ben Saul, an international law specialist from Sydney University, told ABC News that Israel's military action fails to meet the legal threshold for self-defense, which requires an imminent or actual attack from another nation.

"On no plausible understanding of the right of self-defence over the last 70-plus years since 1945, can Israel's current strikes on Iran be seen as a lawful exercise of self-defence," Saul said during a television interview.

The legal assessment comes as diplomatic efforts to contain the conflict face setbacks, with Trump's abrupt departure from the G7 summit leaving Australia without a crucial opportunity to discuss trade tariffs and the AUKUS submarine partnership directly with the U.S. president.

Legal Framework Under Scrutiny

Saul explained that under the UN Charter, countries can only invoke self-defense when they have been attacked or face an imminent strike with actionable intelligence.

"Iran has not launched any kind of nuclear strike on Israel. It doesn't even possess a nuclear weapon yet," Saul said, addressing Israel's justification that the strikes were necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The Sydney University academic noted that preventive disarmament claims have historically been rejected by the international community, citing the 2003 Iraq invasion as a precedent where "the vast majority of countries rejected those claims as not being consistent with international law."

Israel has attempted similar justifications in previous military actions, including bombing an Iraqi reactor in 1981 and a Syrian reactor in 2007, but "those claims have never been accepted by most countries in the world as legitimate exercises of self-defence," Saul said.

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