THE escalating Iran-Israel conflict marks a dangerous and unprecedented phase of direct warfare between the two long-standing adversaries. What began as covert operations and proxy confrontations has now erupted into open, large-scale military exchanges, causing civilian and infrastructure casualties. The humanitarian toll is rising rapidly on both sides, with hundreds killed and injured, including civilians. The conflict has disrupted daily life, overwhelmed medical facilities and triggered mass evacuations in both countries. With nuclear facilities under threat, the risk of regional spillover and global repercussions, especially in energy markets and security architecture, is severe since the strategic stability in the Strait of Hormuz is threatened. Indeed, this is no longer a shadow war. It’s a full-blown military confrontation with the potential to spiral into a broader regional or even global conflict.
Moreover, the United States’ involvement is in flux. President Donald Trump has paused US direct intervention for a few weeks while repositioning naval assets. Plans for a direct potential strike on Iran by the US remain under consideration. Moreover, diplomatically, the situation is extremely volatile. The US has not yet intervened directly and militarily but is on high alert, while calls from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China, Russia, the United Nations and the pope are urging immediate de-escalation.
Illegal justifications?
Nevertheless, it is imperative to critically examine the legitimacy and legality of Israel’s so-called preemptive strike against Iran on June 13 under the lens of international law. Claims of self-defense must meet strict thresholds: imminent threat, necessity and proportionality. Was there concrete evidence of an impending Iranian threat against Israel? Or was this yet another invocation of the elusive “preemption” doctrine, often abused to justify unilateral military action?
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s assertion that Iran has acquired the capability to produce a nuclear bomb demands scrutiny. For over three decades, similar claims have circulated, yet no verifiable nuclear weapon has materialized. This raises the question: Is this intelligence-based reality or politically charged rhetoric aimed at sustaining a so-called existential threat narrative?
Despite years of inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, there remains no definitive evidence that Iran has pursued a nuclear weapon after 2003. Thus, Netanyahu’s narrative is devoid of verified intelligence. Note that the US National Intelligence Estimate, a consensus view of all 16 US intelligence agencies, assessed as early as 2007 that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, and that it had not restarted it. This position was reaffirmed multiple times in the following years, most notably by the 2012 and 2015 updates. Even under the Trump administration, intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard testified that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon at the time. It seems that the Iran nuclear threat narrative, a script we’ve seen before, in Iraq, in Libya, is recycled without verified intelligence in the continued pressure on Iran.
Condemnations
Although a few Western allies of the US, such as France, the United Kingdom and Germany, echo Tel Aviv’s war rhetoric, the international community, specifically many from the Global South, has condemned the Israeli strike against Iran as an unlawful act of aggression. Russia, China and many nonaligned countries declared the strike “illegal” and in violation of the UN Charter. Numerous UN member states like Venezuela, Vietnam, Chile, Brazil and Indonesia urged cessation of hostilities and diplomatic engagement. Twenty-one Arab and Muslim-majority countries also issued a joint condemnation of Israel’s strikes on Iran, denouncing them as violations of the UN Charter, Iran’s sovereignty and international law, and calling for immediate de-escalation, which include: Turkey, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Bahrain, Brunei, Chad, Gambia, Algeria, Comoros, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Libya, Egypt and Mauritania.
The UN Charter prohibits the use of force except in clear self-defense or with Security Council authorization. Without conclusive proof of an imminent Iranian nuclear strike, Israel’s justification appears dangerously thin and destabilizing. Most international law experts say a true anticipatory self-defense as per the UN Charter’s Article 51, (which refers to “the inherent right to self-defense or the natural right of states to defend themselves against aggression, if an armed attack occurs, traditionally interpreted only to permit force in response to an actual armed attack, not a hypothetical or future one, which means reactive rather than preemptive, and must be reported immediately to the Security Council to ensure transparency and accountability), and the Caroline Test (a foundational principle in customary international law used to determine the legality of anticipatory self-defense, that is, the right of a state to use force before an actual armed attack occurs), requires an immediate and overwhelming threat. Thus far, Israel hasn’t demonstrated that Iran was about to launch an armed attack directly or via proxies, making the strike more of a preventive war, which is generally illegal without UN Security Council authorization. Critics further argue that unilateral preemptive strikes on sovereign territory aren’t automatically lawful even during an armed conflict.
Conclusion
In retrospect, the real danger here is the apparently manufactured consent, fear and lies. The alarmist claim by Netanyahu, even by Trump himself, that has echoed across international headlines for over three decades, painting Iran as in the final stages of making a nuclear weapon, yet 30 years have passed, and there is still no sign at all that a nuclear bomb has materialized, is dangerous. The persistent drumbeat of such rhetoric, all under the pretext of global peace and security, but in reality, often serves the strategic interests of those seeking to maintain global hegemony in an emerging multipolar world and stoke perpetual conflict, reveals less about Iran’s actual nuclear intentions and more about how misinformation can be weaponized to justify geopolitical agendas of a “superpower” and its “proxy/pawn.”
This pattern fits a familiar script: vilify a sovereign nation, isolate it economically, destabilize it politically and justify it all under the guise of preemptive defense, which was infamously employed in the run-up to the Iraq war, where “weapons of mass destruction” became the justification for one of the most devastating and destabilizing invasions in modern history. We are now seeing the same playbook used again against Iran, with eerily similar actors and fabricated urgency.
In this regard, the tragedy lies not only in the fabrication of threats but also in the human, regional and global costs borne by these policies, legitimized by what many across the Global South now rightly call a “hegemonic evil empire” that uses pawns/proxies for its so-called geopolitical, geoeconomic and geostrategic interests at the cost of human lives, world peace and security.
No doubt, in essence, the June 13 strike of Israel against Iran has set a troubling precedent: where speculative threats are enough to ignite a regional war, but more critically, a potential third world war, eroding the already fragile framework of the international legal order. Hence, this raises the most dangerous question of all: Are wars now being fought not on the basis of facts, but on manufactured fears and lies? If so, then the real threat is not Iran, but the institutionalized deceit of a superpower and its pawn that masquerades as foreign policy, justified under the pretext of global peace and security.
Source: The Manila Times
https://www.manilatimes.net/2025/06/21/opinion/columns/fabricated-fears-and-endless-war-israel-iran-conflict-and-the-superpower-script/2136916
