Not one single bit of that is a requirement under article 51. Not one. The only requirement is that, upon exercising their right to self defense, a nation will “immediately [report] to the Security Council”. Your questioning “Iran’s involvement” is spurious unless you can actually provide evidence from any reputable intelligence analyst who claims that Hezbollah and/or Hamas are not supported by Iran. It appears to be an Argument From Handwaving. Such diversionary questioning only shows that your argument is weak to the point of infirmity.
The only requirements for Article 51 to be invoked is that there is an armed attack, which has occurred via not one but two Iranian proxy forces, and the UNSC does not maintain the peace and security in response. Your diversionary questions reveal that you cannot, in fact, point to how Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s weaponry supplies been interdicted by the UNSC. You cannot point to how they have been disarmed by the UNSC. You can not point to how their members have been arrested or jailed by the UNSC. You can not, in fact, honestly gainsay the fact that no measures have been taken by the UNSC to maintain international peace and security and defang Hamas and Hezbollah, and thus Israel is entitled to self defense against Iran.
If you would like to add this point to the list of errors you have conceded through your silence, then you need not respond. Should you wish to attempt to defend your position, please show evidence of the UN ensuring that the Iranian proxy forces of Hamas and Hezbollah can no longer threaten international peace and security. I await your well-cited response.
[QUOTE=Spoke]
OK, I misunderstood what you were saying.
[/QUOTE]
No worries.
They aren’t being officially sanctioned by the UN…so, no, I’m not wrong. What INDIVIDUAL nations CHOOSE to do ON THEIR OWN is, you know, their own business.
Spoke has referenced the relevant articles with respect to what standard must be met via the UN Security Counsel: these are Articles 39, 41, and 42. Thereunder, a country can make its case to the Counsel for economic and military options including all-out war. Outside of the Security Counsel framework, reference Article 51 for the salient details: a state can only legally attack unilaterally or multilaterally if the state in question is under armed attack and waiting for the Security Counsel to address the matter during the interim time period. Article 51 expressly limits pre-emptive self defense otherwise. Many speeches by Koffi Annan support and clarify this view.
Therefore - until Israel or the US meet these criteria, attacking Iran is a criminal action.
Has the UNSC defanged Hamas and Hezbollah since the last time(s) they attacked Israel? If not, then we are still in the interim period during which self defense is justified.
Article 51 is only meant to be an interim measure if under attack, which no sovereign state is currently under. Article 51 does not confer carte blanche for the Wild Wild West.
[QUOTE=BordelDeMerde]
Therefore - until Israel or the US meet these criteria, attacking Iran is a criminal action.
[/QUOTE]
Please show a cite indicating that in practice this is the case, because your unsubstantiated assertion and pointing to the Charter isn’t making my bunny jump here, sadly.
(IOW, you haven’t backed this assumption up yet with anything more than you and Spoke’s interpretation of what the Charter really means. If you are an authority on international law and the UN Charter then you might want to trot out your creds at this point…it might help your case)
[QUOTE=BordelDeMerde]
Article 51 is only meant to be an interim measure if under attack, which no sovereign state is currently under. Article 51 does not confer carte blanche for the Wild Wild West.
[/QUOTE]
And, even leaving aside the ridiculous hyperbole aside, you base this interpretation on, what, exactly?
If Israel has clear intelligence that Iran is, in fact, developing nuclear weapons the question is not whether they CAN conduct a preemptive attack, but whether they SHOULD do so.
The UN is ambiguous on this. It appears to be deliberately so, as if someone sometime actually realized that sovereign nations had the right to defend themselves against clear and present dangers.
How did the USA invade Afghanistan? Did the UN declare sanctions? What about Iraq? Yes, these were coalition forces, but without the USA pushing the effort nothing would have happened.
If Iran really is trying to become a member of the nuclear club, then who here thinks it will be a good idea? Will it increase regional stability? Will it make the Iranian theocracy more tractable to diplomacy? Will the Straits of Hormuz remain open?
Article 51 says what it says. It does not say what it does not say.
Its requirements were met, numerous armed attacks have taken place. It’s limiting factor was not met, the UNSC did not remove the threat to peace and security. Therefore it still applies.
What it was “meant” for is somewhat irrelevant, since it was also not “meant” to allow nations to be attacked with impunity by proxy forces while the UNSC did nothing substantive to ensure the peace. According to the letter of the law, Article 51 applies. If you do not like this fact, perhaps you should agitate for the UNSC to finally defang Hamas and Hezbollah and invoke Chapter VI or VII in order to stop Iran from supporting them.
Can you point me to a Security Counsel resolution, minutes, or proposal which equated the terrorist attacks by Hamas or Hezbollah to be attacks by the state of Iran? Certainly if a state was found to be using proxies in its armed attacks and was thereby a legal target of reprisal, the SC would have documented and inform those states of these conclusions.
I merely asked you to explain why you feel there’s no difference between someone who is a Zionist and someone who isn’t and why you insist there’s no difference between someone who supports the Balfour Declaration and someone who thinks it was a mistake.
[QUOTE=BordelDeMerde]
Can you point me to a Security Counsel resolution, minutes, or proposal which equated the terrorist attacks by Hamas or Hezbollah to be attacks by the state of Iran? Certainly if a state was found to be using proxies in its armed attacks and was thereby a legal target of reprisal, the SC would have documented and inform those states of these conclusions.
[/QUOTE]
See, he doesn’t need to do that. YOU need to back up YOUR (well, you and Spoke and anyone else) interpretation of the Charter, because, as has been pointed out, there are precedence already for nations using preemptive strikes against other nations without being called Charter violations. That’s the real world, practical application of the Charter viewed through the veil of precedence, which is pretty much how actual law functions.
So, extraordinary claims needing extraordinary proofs and all that jazz, you need to show why this body of precedence is wrong and why an Israeli strike against an Iranian nuclear weapons facility would be ‘illegal’ and ‘criminal’. Or not, but then you’ll be conceding the point (I’d go that route, personally, since it’s going to be a hard sell, since even a cursory look at how the Charter has actually operated since it’s inception pretty clearly shows you are wrong here).
Again, the purpose of the provision is as a stop-gap to allow states to defend themselves from actual attack pending taking the matter to the Security Council for resolution. It is not a blank check which says that once you get hit with a rocket you have the unrestricted right for all future time to launch military strikes against anyone you think may be ultimately responsible.
This post demonstrates ignorance of (or disregard for) common legal principles. The burden is not on Iran to prove that it was not involved. (“Proving the negative.”) The burden would be on Israel to prove Iran was involved. Has Israel sought to present such evidence to the Security Council?
Again, Article 51 is a stop-gap, not a never-ending blank check. When was the last rocket attack? And does Israel have proof it was state-sponsored?
Based on the article’s language, e.g., “…Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council…” The requirement for immediate reporting indicates the SC process in the earlier articles apply. Meaning no attacks without SC authorization.
I think it is good for the region and good for Israel, too, because it would force Israel to think twice before taking aggressive & beligerent actions which ultimately risk their chance to achieve peace and avoid self-distruction.
Can you show where Article 51 states that
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations and the UNSC has a resolution, minutes or proposal which equates the proxy forces of a nation with that nation.”
Try as I might, I can’t find your qualifiers anywhere in the actual article and it certainly seem as if you invented them.
As it is factually true that Iran uses Hezbollah and Hamas as its proxy force, what the UNSC has documented is somewhat immaterial. The UNSC is not the arbiter of reality, nor does Article 51 actually contain the metrics which you invented above. Besides, are you honestly contending that they are not Iranian proxy forces? What is your cite for that? Absent a cite for that, what UNSC document do you have to support it? Or will you admit that you have raised a spurious objection and just like your addition to Article 51, there is no actual requirement under Article 51 for the UNSC to “document and inform” any states of the status of proxy forces?
I was merely asking you to quote me one paragraph from the article which provides evidence of this being a false flag operation.
I read the article and saw none, but I’m not infallible.
If you can post the part of the article which provides evidence for this false flag operation I will have obviously been wrong, but if you can’t every reasonable person reading this would have to conclude that you made a mistake when you claimed that the article contained evidence of this being a false flag operation.
This is getting ridiculous, and I am pretty close to shutting down this thread. While you’re encouraged to attack the post and not the poster, that’s supposed to mean you offer something of substance instead of just posting a long description of how dumb you think another post is. Save that for the Pit.
The dozens of illegal incursions, coup d’etat, “regime changes”, and other violations by the US and other states which may have gone previously unchecked does not change my reading of the Articles or preclude the SC from acting responsibly now.
