In the early hours of February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched what President Trump called a “large-scale and ongoing” military campaign against Iran – codenamed Operation Epic Fury by the Pentagon and Operation Roaring Lion by Israel. Trump posted an eight-minute video on Truth Social at 2:30 a.m. Eastern time, describing the operation as an effort to eliminate “imminent threats” from an “evil, radical dictatorship.” He urged Iranian citizens to “take over your government.”
By evening, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was dead – killed in the early stages of the attacks, according to Israeli officials and later confirmed by Iranian state media, which declared 40 days of national mourning. Iran retaliated by firing drones and missiles at Israeli bases and US bases across the Gulf. At least 201 civilians are reported killed in Iran, while 747 are injured, according to the Red Crescent.
These strikes are more than a regional phenomenon. They are a direct challenge to the international order of law and diplomacy built after 1945 and to the limits on presidential warmaking imposed by the US Constitution.
Violation of the United Nations Charter
The UN Charter was written specifically to prohibit the use of force. Article 2(4) prohibits military action against the territorial integrity or political independence of another State except with the permission of the Security Council or in genuine self-defense under Article 51, which permits force only in response to an actual armed attack.
In June 2025, UN human rights experts warned that “anticipatory” self-defense against a non-imminent threat is unlawful, warning that the broad pre-emptive doctrine would revive the era of “might be right” that the post-war order was designed to prevent. The International Commission of Jurists had reached similar conclusions regarding earlier American and Israeli attacks.
The February 2026 operation follows a long series of precedents that have progressively extended these limits. NATO’s 1999 Kosovo campaign, conducted without Security Council authorization, was widely considered illegal, despite humanitarian justifications. The 2003 invasion of Iraq cited imminent threats that proved unfounded. The decade after 9/11 reinforced this pattern: US drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia – often without host-state consent or UN approval – were justified as counter-terrorism or self-defense. Each example, described as extraordinary, became a precedent for the next.
The February 2026 strikes follow the same logic that places power above the law, creating what legal scholars have called the “grammar of restraint” that formed after World War II.
Shia Muslims hold a portrait of Ayatollah Khamenei during a protest against the US and Israel in Jammu on March 1, 2026. Photo courtesy: Channi Anand/AP
At the heart of this fallacy is the principle of anticipatory self-defense. Article 51 allows the use of force only in response to an armed attack. Customary international law, defined in the 19th-century Caroline formula, limits self-defense to threats that are “immediate, overwhelming, leaving no alternative means.”
Over time, the meaning of “adjacency” has expanded. The 2002 US National Security Strategy argued that serious or unconventional threats might justify striking first – an argument later applied to Iraq and echoed in Trump’s justification for the current campaign. The International Court of Justice has consistently taken a narrow view of what constitutes an “armed attack”, and many international law scholars reject the use of force on the basis of perceived risks.
If the expanded doctrine becomes established practice, states could cite anticipated threats – missile deployments, changing alliances, military modernization – as grounds for attack, making the Charter’s prohibition conditional rather than absolute.
People gather at the Shrine of Imam Reza to mourn the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Mashhad, Iran, on March 1, 2026. Photo Courtesy: Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcast/ANI
Legal criticism of the strikes is not limited to Western capitals. In the Global South, governments rejected the legal basis proposed by Washington and Tel Aviv. The Chairman of the African Union, Mahmoud Ali Youssef, said the operation reflected a “serious intensification of hostilities” and called on all parties to act “fully in accordance with international law and the UN Charter”. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that the attacks “violated international law”, noting that “anticipatory self-defense is not permitted under international law”. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel called the attacks a “gross violation of international law and the UN Charter.” Malaysia’s Foreign Ministry said the use of force violated the charter’s prohibition and called for disputes to be settled through diplomacy.
For many states in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the Charter’s constraints are not rhetorical commitments but structural safeguards. If powerful states can unilaterally redefine adjacency to suit their strategic interests, the legal protections on which smaller states depend become dependent on political alignment rather than principle.
stressful history
Iran’s modern era is marred by foreign interference. In 1953, the CIA, with British support, organized a coup that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected leader, Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. The Shah’s repressive regime aroused resentment in the West and contributed to the conditions that gave rise to the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
An estimated one million people died and both societies were devastated in the brutal 1980–88 Iran–Iraq war, triggered by Saddam Hussein’s invasion, a conflict in which many Western governments supplied weapons to Baghdad.
The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, justified by claims of weapons of mass destruction that were never found, led to the deaths of thousands of civilians, inflaming sectarian conflict and leaving the region less stable than before.
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In contrast, the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or “Iran nuclear deal”, was a product of continued multilateral negotiations. It froze Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. When the US withdrew in 2018, critics warned that abandoning the functional, if incomplete, agreement would isolate Washington and invite renewed nuclear competition. The February 2026 attacks – which began just weeks after a new round of US-Iran talks held under Omani and European mediation in Geneva – confirmed that warning.
Bombs may destroy infrastructure, but they rarely create stable regimes. History shows that they often strengthen the forces they seek to eliminate.
constitutional question
The February 2026 attacks also hit home the limits of the US Constitution. Article 1 The power to declare war is vested exclusively in Congress. The White House informed the bipartisan “Gang of Eight”—senior congressional leaders and Intelligence Committee heads—shortly before the operation began, but did not seek formal authorization.
The constitutional objection is not new. When the US joined Israel’s attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025, the A.C.L.U. [American Civil Liberties Union] Wrote a letter to the White House clarifying that “only Congress can authorize the use of military force against Iran.” Oakland Rep. Latifah Simon called that first bombing “lawless, dangerous and immoral.” Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Trump had “ignored the Constitution by unilaterally engaging our military without the authorization of Congress”. Those arguments apply equally strongly to the February 2026 campaign.
Following the latest attacks, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Representative Ro Khanna of California introduced a bipartisan war powers resolution to prohibit continued hostilities in Iran without congressional approval. House Democratic leaders said they would bring it up for a vote.
diplomatic breakdown
The timing is remarkable. The latest attacks came just weeks after renewed US-Iran talks in Geneva, the most recent effort to resolve disputes over Iran’s nuclear and missile programs through dialogue. The force did not complement those negotiations; This marked his end.
What is lost is not just a round of negotiations but the conditions that make negotiations possible: the expectation that disputes will be resolved through dialogue rather than sudden violence, and that once agreements are reached they will be sustained.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during a UN Security Council meeting after the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran at UN Headquarters in New York City on February 28, 2026. Photo Credit: Heather Khalifa/Reuters
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, speaking at an emergency Security Council session on the day of the attack, called the escalation “a grave threat to international peace and security” and warned that military action “risks provoking a chain of events that no one can control”. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called for an immediate de-escalation of tensions, calling it a “unilateral military action by the United States and Israel.” Russia described the attacks as “a premeditated and unprovoked act of aggression”. China called for talks and a halt to military action.
If force alone becomes the yardstick of international disputes, the structures of collective security (the UN Charter, multilateral law, negotiated agreements) lose their purpose. The question now is whether the strikes bring the stability that their architects claim to seek, or whether history has a record of such interventions.
inside iran
Khamenei had no declared successor. Under the constitution, a provisional council – consisting of the president, the judiciary chief and a Guardian Council member – holds power while the 88-member Assembly of Experts selects a permanent replacement “as soon as possible”. President Massoud Pezeshkian and judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni sit on the AJE Interim Council; The third seat was unconfirmed till Sunday.
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Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] Will shape the outcome. council on foreign relations [CFR] noted that the removal of Khamenei “does not equate to regime change – the IRGC is the regime itself.” A CIA assessment conducted before the attacks concluded that radicalized IRGC figures were the most likely beneficiaries of any infection. The historical precedent in Iran shows that external attack strengthens rather than weakens a strong power.
The CFR identified three possible trajectories: managed regime continuity, a military takeover, or systemic collapse. Which prevails will determine whether the operation produces the results its architects desire.
The author is a legislative and policy researcher and LAMP Fellow 2024-25 at PRS Legislative Research.