If there is one rule under international law that is unequivocal, it is that a state that has been attacked by another state has the right to defend itself.
"Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations," states Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
This is true for every country – except it seems for Israel. When it comes to the world's only Jewish state, apparently, the rules do not apply.
On October 1, 2024, Iran directly attacked Israel for the second time in six months, launching at least 180 ballistic missiles at Israeli towns cities and towns and sending millions of Israelis into bomb shelters. Iran simply did what it has been doing for decades: trying to obliterate Israel, which Iran usually attempts using its proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, as its own human shields, possibly to create "plausible deniability" and to protect itself from retaliation.
The attack by Iran on Israel was an undeniable violation of international law. There should not be the slightest doubt that the moment the Islamic Republic of Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it will try to use them on Israel.
Israel not only has a right to respond to this latest attack; it has a duty to its citizens to prevent a future nuclear attack by Iran. For 45 years -- ever since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah in 1979 -- Iran's regime has been threatening "Death to Israel."
Iran, both alone and through its proxies, has attacked Israel -- a country smaller than New Jersey – for the past year, non-stop, on seven fronts: Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran itself. Lately, Iran has been eyeing an eighth front from which to fire on Israel: Sudan.
U.S. President Joe Biden nonetheless told reporters that he would not support an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear sites, and that if Israel did defend itself against Iranian aggression, it should only do so "proportionally."
"We'll be discussing with the Israelis what they're going to do, but all seven of us agree that they have a right to respond but they should respond proportionally," Biden said after a virtual meeting with the leaders of the other G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy and the United Kingdom). "Obviously, Iran is way off course."
If 180 ballistic missiles were launched into the United States in the span of half an hour or so, would the president's response be that the attacker was "way off course"?
What, in addition, do Biden and the G7 mean by "proportional?" That Israel has "permission" to fire a few hundred ballistic missiles at Iran? Under international humanitarian law, proportionality is about "assessing what constitutes excessive civilian harm in relation to a given military advantage." Biden knows full well that Israel historically has, as its highest priority, conducting its military operations with needle precision to prevent civilian casualties.
The Israeli military scrupulously distinguishes between civilians and combatants in its targeting, and where there were civilians in the area, has aborted attacks. Israel also repeatedly warns civilians of impending attacks with flyers, text messages and phone calls. "Israel," wrote John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point, "has Created a New Standard for Urban Warfare. Why Will No One Admit It?" Israel has, in fact, been called, by Col. Richard Kemp CBE, "The World's Most Moral Army."
Military sites, however, such as Iran's nuclear facilities, and enemy combatants, are not protected by the proportionality principle, and "protected sites, such as hospitals, schools and mosques, if they store weapons or are used for military purposes, forfeit their protected status."
If a country is in danger of being attacked by nuclear weapons, within "one or two weeks," as it is, according to the US Department of State, a request for "proportionality" is nonsensical.
What Israel's leadership needs to do is ensure that Iran will not be able to attack the Jewish state ever again, either with conventional weapons or nuclear ones. This obligation, elementary for any country, means that Israel needs to incapacitate Iran's nuclear sites and arguably put an end to Iran's theocratic regime. There is no point in having an "accommodation" with Iran. To have peace in the Middle East, the West will need to defeat Iran.
Iran, cordially loathed by many of own its trapped citizens, already controls four countries in addition to its own: Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. The regime has made no secret of its commitment to exporting its Islamic revolution globally -- including to Sudan, the rest of Africa, the Western Hemisphere and the world. As the founder of the 1979 Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, said:
"We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry 'There is no god but Allah' resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle."[1]
"Islam says," he also noted: "Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword!" [2]
Yet the Biden-Harris administration, together with the other G7 countries, who represent almost the entire West, apparently cannot agree that the world would be better off if "the leading state sponsor of global terrorism" -- on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons -- were stopped in its tracks.
The Biden-Harris administration and the G7 countries seem perfectly comfortable with Iran's plans to annihilate Israel, take over the oil-rich gulf states, then the entire Middle East, until they get to the rest of the planet. Not only do many of these countries appear to dismiss what Israel is doing to protect civilization; some actually appear to harbor a not-so-secret wish for Israel to be gone. How else can one explain the ongoing opprobrium and the prohibition on destroying Iran's nuclear sites?
Last month, UN member states took the war against Israel one historic step further, when the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution essentially telling the Jewish state that it has no right to defend itself against terrorism in Gaza, the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and that it must withdraw from those areas within the next twelve months. The resolution, introduced by the representative of the Palestinian Authority to the UN, demanded that "Israel brings to an end without delay its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which constitutes a wrongful act of a continuing character entailing its international responsibility, and do so no later than 12 months".
The resolution, which did not mention Hamas, the October 7 mass murders, tortures, rapes or kidnappings -- or Iran's aggression -- also called on member states not to sell arms or military equipment to Israel that could be used in Gaza, the West Bank, or east Jerusalem. The resolution also called for a boycott of all Israeli products produced over the pre-1967 lines.
Countries such as Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain voted for the resolution alongside countries such as Iran, China and Russia. Most other European countries abstained, alongside Australia and Canada. The only countries to vote against the resolution were Argentina, the Czech Republic, Fiji, Hungary, Israel, Malawi, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Tonga, Tuvalu, and the United States. The resolution is not binding, but the adoption of it, with the active support of most Western states, put on display the extent of the moral rot and degradation that now guides the decisions of Western leaders. The UN resolution also showed those countries' disregard for Western civilization – a civilization which Israel, with no thanks from anyone, is paying the highest price imaginable to protect from tyranny and barbarism.
Israel has routinely, until now, sought to appease world opinion by adhering to US directives – including the Biden administration's demand that it abstain from meaningfully responding to the April barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles. Israel's self-restraint appears only to have emboldened Iran into attacking Israel again on October 1 – perhaps leading Israel to realize at last that it really is all alone in its self-defense.
UN Secretary General António Guterres, who necessitated Israel's removing Hezbollah's war machine after he failed to keep the terrorist group out of Southern Lebanon as he was obligated to under UN Security Council Resolution 1701, could not even bring himself to condemn Iran for its war crime of launching ballistic missiles directly at civilians. "I condemn the broadening of the Middle East conflict with escalation after escalation. This must stop. We absolutely need a ceasefire," Guterres posted on X on the evening of Iran's attack.
He dug himself even deeper into demonizing Israel by declaring that the "attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum" -- not only justifying terrorism and implicitly blaming Israel.
"This deadly cycle of tit-for-tat violence must stop" he said on October 2. "Time is running out" -- but conveniently leaving aside that it was he who was supposed to have ensured that Hezbollah's terrorists stayed out of southern Lebanon
Sending roughly 180 ballistic missiles at a country smaller than the state of New Jersey is not a "tit-for-tat." It is attempted genocide. Only when Israel declared Guterres persona non grata and banned him from entering Israel, did he force himself to mutter the word Iran, but still, instead, highlighting "Palestine":
"Yesterday, Iran launched approximately 200 ballistic missiles towards Israel. Millions of people across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory were forced to seek shelter.
"As I did in relation to the Iranian attack in April -- and as should have been obvious yesterday in the context of the condemnation I expressed -- I again strongly condemn yesterday's massive missile attack by Iran on Israel.
"These attacks paradoxically do nothing to support the cause of the Palestinian people or reduce their suffering."
All this, however, concerns more than "just the Jews." If Western countries actively enable autocracy, terrorism and savagery not just by standing passively by but by disabling a country that is fighting these onslaughts -- where does that leave the West when those forces move on to their next targets?
Robert Williams is based in the United States.
[1] February 11, 1979 (according to Dilip Hiro in The Longest War p.32) p.108 from Excerpts from Speeches and Messages of Imam Khomeini on the Unity of the Muslims.
[2] Quoted in Holy Terror: Inside the World of Islamic Terrorism by Amir Taheri, (pp. 241-243), 1987.
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