International law

Iran’s Foreign Minister Dr Mohammad Javad Zarif gave a speech at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). SIPRI is a highly respected research institute with a special place in the hearts of peace-lovers throughout the world. In a world where there are so many think thanks and organisations advocating war and conflict, the few peace institutes have a big role to play to fill the void and provide an alternative voice to the dominant clamour of corporate media that represent the establishment and its reliance upon conflict and the military-industrial complex. The sanctions on Iran violate international law The latest series of American extraterritorial sanctions on Iran have given rise to enormous hardships and food and medical shortages experienced by ordinary Iranians. The dispatch of military forces and warships to the Persian Gulf have brought the world to the verge of another devastating war in the Middle East that...

The essay below is a modified version of the 2018 Annual Lecture of the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) of Queen Mary’s University London, given on March 22 of that year. Its original title was “Geopolitical Crimes: A Preliminary Jurisprudential Proposal.” The text of the lecture has been further revised since publication in the Spring 2019 issue of the Journal of State Crime.  Its major premise is that international criminal law has developed a framework for judging the criminal conduct of states with respect to armed conflict and in the relations of state/society relations, but is silent about even the most severe crimes of diplomacy. It is these ‘geopolitical crimes’ that are more responsible for inflicting mass suffering on civilian populations than are most of the forms of international behavior currently criminalized. I am aware that criminalizing acts of diplomacy is a revolutionary idea, but no less for that, deserving of commentary and debate....

Somebody once said that courage is when you do something today you wouldn’t dare doing yesterday. That is why I decided to express my opinion whereas normally I would choose – wisely – to restrain my lips. Have you ever had an opportunity to speak with your friends about migrants and mass immigration? Especially with your international friends living in different parts of the world and changing their residence like migrating birds? How do you explain your views if they differ from the usual, dominating or politically correct one? Or, how do you actually explain that you are against immigration without risking being categorized as a racist? During my latest visit to Switzerland, while conversing with a friend about many topics including politics, somehow we started discussing immigration. My friend’s opinion was that Swiss people may seem cold and distant, but in reality they are very open-minded and friendly to...

– Hiroshima Day If MAD was Mad then the decision of President Donald Trump to renounce the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) is MADDER. MAD is Mutually Assured Destruction, a concept which underlay the nuclear deterrence of the Cold War. Presidents Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan began the hard work of dismantling MAD with the INF, a treaty affecting the land-based missiles of Europe. It abolished missiles with a range of 500 to 2000 kilometres. They were dangerous beyond their size (small relative to Inter-continental missiles), more dangerous in the sense that their flying time was a short ten minutes, which made pre-emptive action by Russia truly a possibility and nuclear war then a near certainty. No wonder that the abrogation of the INF has been treated by dismay by many people inside the Pentagon and the State Department and among nuclear strategists in EU countries. In the forthcoming issue...

The following statement on US warmongering in relation to Iran was prepared by Mark LeVine, Professor of History, University of California, Irvine and myself. Some of the early signatories are among the leading scholars in the field of Middle East Studies. Their names are listed below. It seeks to make two major arguments: First, that the unlawful threats and coercive moves made by the United States point toward a political disaster that would include the commission of the most serious of international crimes, that of aggression via threats and uses of force that do not constitute self-defense under international law; and Secondly, that it is essential to shift the relationship with Iran from one based on coercive to an approach resting on restorative diplomacy involving a deliberate reversal of American Foreign Policy with the overriding objective of normalization of relations between our two countries. Statement by leading Middle East/Islamic studies...

August 3, 2019 By Prabir Purkayastha The U.S. plans for a naval armada in Hormuz will run against the Laws of Seas and Iran’s sovereignty over its territorial waters. We are now sleepwalking to a new war in the region with disastrous consequences. The stage is now set for a disastrous collision between the U.S.-UK navies and Iran in the busy waters of the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait connects the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea and makes up the world’s major oil choke point, carrying about 30-35 percent of total traded oil. The latest move of the U.S. and UK—to provide “protection” with their warships to merchant vessels in the Strait of Hormuz—is an assertion of imperial rights over Iran’s territorial waters. In other words, this is what would have been called, in an earlier era, gunboat diplomacy. Iran will not accept this. Originally published at citizentruth.org This...

, marks for Europe. Comment Today is a tragic day for Europe, indeed for the world – but do the media highlight that fact on their front pages? Of course, they don’t. The INF Treaty has made Europe less insecure since 1987. But Russia and the US have accused each other of violating it. The bigger reasons for this tragedy are that a) there is a new Cold War in Europe and b) since other countries are now able to develop similar INF weapons – Inter-mediate range Nuclear Forces (INF) with the particular range mentioned in this movie – they want to have their hands free. And, one might almost say, as usual – the policies of the US have spearheaded today’s tragedy, particularly with the totally counterproductive and de factor offensive Ballistic Missile Defence, BMD, that Russia – legitimately – sees as a threat. Just listen to a man...

In 2010 the signatory states of the International Criminal Court, established to prosecute war crimes, convened a conference to add aggression to the list of crimes the court could try. (See the Rome Statute here, the relevant provisions and definitions of the concept of “aggression” are described in Article 8, page 7). The US, Russia, Iran, China and India have refused to sign up as ICC members and have not welcomed the addition of “aggression”. But fifteen NATO states have. Moreover, Russia wrote its own law into its Criminal Code. It prohibits “Planning, Preparing or Waging an Aggressive War”. It goes further: it prohibits “Public Appeals to Unleash an Aggressive War”. This opens the door to Russian leaders and politicians being prosecuted in domestic courts. In the US under President Barack Obama, there was serious discussion about whether to prosecute those who had committed torture. It would have been popular...

Illustration by Craig Stephens, South China Morning Post By Christopher Black July 26th 2019 On June 4th the Chinese government issued a travel alert for Chinese tourists thinking of visiting the United States, a day after it issued a similar advisory to Chinese students thinking of studying in the US over concerns for their safety and security. Chinese in the US are reporting harassment and interrogations by US immigration authorities and many now have the impression they are not welcome in the US. Originally posted on Global Research on June 10, 2019 here The Global Times, speaking on behalf of the government stated, “The Chinese people find it difficult to accept the fact that they are being taken as thieves. The US boasts too much superiority and has been indulged by the world. Due to its short history, it lacks understanding of and respect for the rules of countries and laws...

I make no claim to approach this book with an open mind. Making a fuller disclosure, I acknowledge with some pride that I have endorsed Justice for Some even before it was published, and my blurb appears on its back cover. Beyond this, two months ago I took part in a book launch at George Mason University where Noura Erakat is on the faculty. My effort in this review is not to make a calm appraisal of the book’s strengths and weaknesses, but rather to celebrate it as a major scholarly contribution to the critical literature devoted to resolving the Israel/Palestine struggle in line with the dictates of justice rather than by a continuing reliance on muscular weight of subjugation as augmented by geopolitics. And, accordingly, to seize this opportunity to urge a careful reading of Justice for Some by all those interested in the Palestinian struggle as well as those...

There’s never been a full-scale war between two nuclear-armed states. If Iran one day did cross the nuclear threshold the same deterrence will apply. No one rational would want to provoke their own incineration. Columbia University professor, Kenneth Waltz, the distinguished theorist on the conduct of war, wrote in Foreign Affairs that with Israel possessing over 200 nuclear weapons (which the US refuses to publically admit) Iran having a bomb would bring stability. I would never go as far as Waltz on that last point. The launch of nuclear weapons can always be done by accident or by the rogue action of one or two of the members of the launch team in the silo. It has nearly happened in the US a number of times, and probably in the Soviet Union too. Moreover, if Iran got really close to building a bomb, Saudi Arabia would follow in short order,...

On July 9, 2004 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague issued an Advisory Opinion by a vote of 14-1, with the American judge the lone dissenter, as if there would have been any doubt about such identity even if not disclosed. The decision rendered in response to a question put to it by a General Assembly resolution declared the separation wall unlawful, and that compliance with international law would require it to be dismantled and Palestinian communities and individuals compensated for harm incurred. As with the identity of the dissenting judge, the failure of Israel to comply with the decision was as predictable as the time of tomorrow’s sunrise. Originally published at richardfalk.wordpress.com Only slightly less anticipated was the American government response, which adopted its customary hegemonic tone, to instruct the parties that such issues should be resolved by politicalnegotiation, which even if heeded would end up...