The recent "12-Day War" has, typically, two very different conceptual claims about that. On one view, the belligerents were involved in a longstanding war that just rushed into a high kinetic phase for a few days. This view is my own; I personally had an Iranian 107mm rocket land within a few feet of me during a bombardment by Shia militias Iran had armed and trained back in 2007. This was not the only such rocket attack I encountered, to say nothing of the daily mortar attacks we had for a while. I didn't really resent it; I understood that we were there in Iraq without their consent, either the militias or Iran's. The US could have claimed such a thing as a provocation if it had wanted to, legally, but didn't want to expand the war at that time. Other proxy forces, like Hamas of "October 7th" infamy, and Hezbollah, and the Houthis, have been shooting at us (and us back at them) for a very long time.
On this view, Revolutionary Iran 'started it' declaring war on the United States by seizing our embassy and diplomats; or the US 'started it' by backing the Shah and his tyranny; or, more likely, the British 'started it' in the colonial era that we walked into on the back end. As is often the case in war, this judgment is complicated by competing claims and tangled history; it is usually the case that the victor gets to decree that the loser was the one who 'started it.' The justice of such claims is therefore suspect.
The second view of this first judgment, the judgment about aggression, is that the 12-Day War was a discrete entity that started when Israel assassinated a lot of Iranian leaders in the act of aggression (note definite article). Opponents of Israel paint this, even, as unprovoked in spite of the long history of continuous violence; by treating the 12-Day War as a discrete entity with a clear beginning (and, hopefully!, end), they can omit that long history of proxy warfare as background noise and focus on the clear state-to-state violence. This approach allows for a cleaner claim, but it is also suspect as a matter of justice because it intentionally ignores so much that is relevant.
Once this first judgment is made, however it is made, there remains a second judgment about how the war was fought. This is technically called jus in bello, or justice within war. On this point, assassination is clearly over the line into war crimes -- at least, as the laws of war have traditionally been known.
As this article points out, however, assassination has become a standard practice for both the United States and Israel. Assassination is against the rules of war but so is the use of civilian-dressed proxy forces. It may be that the rules themselves are so outdated that they need to be revised in recognition of new realities.
It also always struck me that the ban on assassinations in the 'laws' of war was totally self-serving on the part of the politicians and military leaders. Of course we'll have a rule that we are untouchable; you have to restrict your killing to the unimportant blue-collar dudes we conscripted and sent to fight you on our behalf. I've always been suspect of the subset of the laws of war that protect politicians, royalty, and the like.
There might be a justice condition for reversing that ban. Assassination at least targets the genuinely guilty rather than the poor conscripts. The reason I have praised the restraint against assassinating the Ayatollah is not that it would be unjust to kill him after all he has done, but that it would be pragmatically unwise to do so. It is helpful to preserve a leader who can negotiate an end to the war from a position of recognized authority.
By the same token, killing so much of the military chain of command may have made it harder to get the ceasefire into effect by the deadline: there are some practical downsides to disabling such linkages once you get to the point that you want to end the fighting, though it is pragmatically wise to do it while fighting continues.
Since the rules haven't been formally revised, technically one could probably defend a prosecution at the Hague for the round of assassinations. However, doing so would run into its own pragmatic difficulties: it would be rejected by the leadership of most nations, since the United States and Russia as well as Israel would find themselves in danger from such prosecutions.
Dad29 points out by email (he brought the linked articles to my attention this morning, though I had been researching the issue yesterday separately) the claim that Israel may have effected a strategic advance by one killing that might have been an assassination:
Similarly, Chinese columnist Bin Hua noted that Iran had recently tilted towards India and away from China.These apparent shifts in Iranian foreign policy may have now proven disastrous for the country and seem likely to have been propelled by a crucial change at the top of Iran’s government.Following his 2021 election, hardline Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi had enjoyed close relations with Russia and China, but in May 2024 he had died in a highly-suspicious helicopter crash along with his foreign minister, and given subsequent events, it now seems quite likely that Mossad had been responsible. Raisi’s successor Masoud Pezeshkian was a far more moderate political figure eager to restore good relations with America and the rest of the West and he deliberately avoided drawing closer to Russia or China lest such steps alienate Western leaders.Thus, it seems quite possible that a Mossad assassination had successfully diverted Iranian foreign policy in a direction that ultimately had dire strategic consequences for the country.
If that's true, it would be an unusual success for an assassination. They normally have only small effects, as personnel are easily replaced. They could have larger-scale effects in special cases, though: for example, the attempt on Trump in Butler would, had it succeeded as it almost did, have had titanic effects.
No comments:
Post a Comment