By Chris Trotter*
The joint military assault on Iran by the United States and Israel has placed New Zealand in an awkward position. Viewed through the lens of international law the attack is unequivocally illegal. The United States is a signatory to the United Nations Charter which, with the exception of defensive measures undertaken to counter actual or imminent aggression, outlaws military action against other member states.
Far from preparing to attack the US, the Iranian government was engaged in diplomatic negotiations with the Americans. According to the Omani foreign minister, who was facilitating these discussions, they were proceeding in a positive direction. The United States had no grounds for launching what the Pentagon is calling “Operation Epic Fury”.
Were our own or any other government considered a friend and/or ally of the United States to declare openly that its military action against Iran is illegal, however, the consequences of such outspokenness would not be pleasant. The administration of President Donald Trump has demonstrated repeatedly its willingness to impose severe economic penalties on any nation foolhardy enough to criticise its conduct.
New Zealand’s foreign minister, Winston Peters, is well aware of the risks attached to such candour. He understands that in relation to the Trump Administration silence is golden. Saying nothing, or offering only the blandest of responses, may leave outraged New Zealanders with nothing to praise, but, equally, it leaves the Americans with nothing to punish.
While it is much less risky to criticise the State of Israel these days, in relation to “Operation Roaring Lion” (the name the Israelis have given to their attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran) discretion is, once again, the most sensible option. New Zealand cannot rain down condemnation upon the head of Benjamin Netanyahu without, by implication, heaping coals upon the baseball cap of Donald Trump. The American head-of-state is hot enough already!
Besides, the days when branding the conduct of a major power “illegal” could cause it the slightest embarrassment are long gone. We have it on the authority of no less a figure than the Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, that the world has regressed to that state of international relations where, as the Ancient Greek historian Thucydides put it: “The strong do what they can, while the weak endure what they must.”
That being the case, then surely our foreign minister’s best course of action is to identify among all the fire and smoke any opportunities for advancing New Zealand’s national interests. If moralism serves no purpose, then why not see what realism has to offer?
The starting point for any realistic assessment of this latest conflict is to understand why the Israelis and Americans chose this precise moment to initiate it.
If the former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett is to be believed, then the timing of this attack was dictated by the Iranians’ decision to construct a new and improved nuclear facility even deeper underground than the complex “obliterated” by the Americans in June 2025. So deep, in fact, that it would be impervious to all forms of conventional attack.
The key long-term objective of both the Israelis and the Americans has always been to prevent the Iranians from making the transition from the zone of vulnerability to the zone of immunity. Why? Because the moment Iran makes itself immune to attack, the acquisition of a nuclear weapon is only a matter of time.
An Iran equipped with nuclear-tipped, long-range, ballistic missiles is an existential threat to the State of Israel. To prevent such an eventuality the Israelis will stop at nothing, and the Americans will sanction anything.
Those being the moral parameters in play, the attacks beginning on 28th February 2026 were always going to happen – UN Charter, or no UN Charter.
What’s more, they cannot end until the Islamic Republic of Iran has ceased to exist.
If regime change is the non-negotiable war aim of the Israelis and Americans, then the key question for New Zealand diplomats must surely be: “What sort of regime change?”
Because regime change can take many forms. It can be about constitutional reform, economic reconstruction, and nation-building. The hard option.
It can be about smashing the old regime to pieces. The easy option.
At the time of writing, the Israelis and Americans appeared to be well on the way to achieving the easy option. In an astonishing feat of intelligence-gathering, the venue for a conference involving Iran’s key political and military leaders was identified and blown to smithereens. Among the dead was said to be Iran’s “Supreme Leader”, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
One can only hope that the Devil has a special place in Hell reserved for the man who, for nearly four decades, was willing to authorise the murder and torture of tens-of-thousands of his fellow Iranians, rather than allow them to make their own way to God.
When the regime finally falls, and the war ends, President Trump has invited the “Iranian people” to “take back their country” and construct a new government out of the ruins of the old.
A noble objective, except the “Iranian people” are very far from being a principled and homogeneous entity determined to establish a united, free and prosperous nation. In reality, they are a seething mass of conflicting impulses and interests.
In Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya, it suited the interests of both the Israelis and the Americans to simply walk away from the messes they had made of other people’s countries and let their traumatised populations spend the next few decades locked in bloody civil wars to determine who ruled over the ruins.
New Zealand’s interests will not be served by the instigators of this latest regime change in the Middle East once again washing their hands of all responsibility for the ruin they have wrought.
Our government should do all within its power to persuade the Americans to install a replacement regime with the wherewithal to maintain a decent level of social cohesion. The United States should then be encouraged to take the lead in rebuilding Iran’s shattered economy by lifting the economic sanctions imposed upon the Islamic Republic and releasing Iran’s frozen financial assets.
The economic potential of a well-governed and tolerant Iran is huge. It’s population of 90 million is well-educated and eager to take advantage of the opportunities that will open up if the new regime encourages its citizens to be innovative and enterprising. Most Iranians are under 25 years-of-age, theirs is no country for old men, not anymore.
Winston Peters should encourage Donald Trump to do what no American president has done since the end of World War II. Get rid of a dictator. Abolish the system that created the dictator. Design a new system that sustains personal freedom, encourages both public and private enterprise, and refuses to let fanatics take charge.
New Zealand could do a lot of business with a country like that.
*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.
36 Comments
If the threat of a nuclear weapon in Iran’s possession is a hoax then so too is this strike on Iran by the USA and Israel. But if the threat is in fact real, the consequences of the strike are vital to not only the Middle East but the world order. The point is that Iran has always seated itself as being outside of, if not superior to, its Arabic neighbours. Farsi speaking not Arabic, ancient Persian Empire, Xerxes and co, only stopped by the Greeks from owning all of Europe. A nuclear attack on Israel would invite obviously nuclear retaliation and that exchange would create fall out sufficient to decimate the entire region which it would seem to be of little concern to the Iranian leaders provided that they and their entourage survive. So is it then a question of consequences? That is what are the consequences if Iran should fulfil its sworn objective to annihilate Israel and the consequences of the regime being prevented from proceeding as intended.
I have no problem with the USA bombing the s#$@ out of any Middle Eastern State that has nuclear weapons outside of international conventions.
Does that include Israel?
Israel attained nuclear weapons over 50 years ago. Shouldn’t have but did. As with the like of Russia the stated purpose if for use in the face of an existential threat. To date that threat has not eventuated and Israel still exists.
Is that a yes or a no?
It is neither. It merely suggests an explanation, in conjunction with my initial post, as to why Israel has not been existentially attacked and why Israel still exists. Theoretically that in turn could indicate why it might not be a good idea to launch such an attack on Israel.
North Korea? Hasn't Russia just abandoned the conventions? Who controls the nuclear weapon international conventions?
President Donald Trump has said he can replace an expiring US-Russia arms control deal with a better agreement that includes China, a move that would upend a decades-long arrangement between the world's biggest nuclear powers.
But as Washington and Moscow seek a path forward following the expiration of an Obama-era treaty on Thursday, former senior US officials and analysts warned that a new deal could take years and face major hurdles if the administration wants China and Russia to cooperate.
The US government has very clearly demonstrated that international conventions are not worth the paper they're written on. They're doing whatever they want without any consultation , so everyone can else do the same.
Well said.
And let's remember that it was the US which halted Salt negotiations...
Seems to be general acknowledgement on here at least, that treaties and such like are disbanded and betrayed easily enough. It’s hardly new. The Non Aggression Pact of Molotov & Ribbentrop was blown out the window by Barbarossa. Ukraine thought by giving up its nukes it had a pact, but found they didn’t. So it’s no stretch to agree that treaties such as SALT would end similarly thereby indicating little value in the first place.
MikeM7382,
Forget international law, that's flogging a dead horse, but Trump has taken America to war without seeking Congressional approval. If US casualties start to mount, how will Congress react?
linklater. US casualties won't mount unless there's an on the ground operation or other countries get involved. That drones are operating with impunity over Iran and manned aircraft have switched from standoff to conventional bombing demonstrates total US/Israeli mastery of the skies and inevitable complete degradation of Irans long range missile capability. Orange man knows that all he'll get from his US political opponents is carefully crafted manufactured outrage about international rules. There is powerful US public memory about the decades long hostile actions against US interests by Iran and its proxies.
This seems a decapitation attack, that both removes leadership while likely aiming to start an Iranian internal power struggle that will consume a leadership class already under pressure from their citizens.
Is Iran going to descend in to a chaotic power struggle between factions vying for control? Will the remains of the ruling cadres retain enough power to maintain something like the status quo, or is it likely even more intractable leadership will evolve?
The statements about illegality or otherwise feel like the posturing of groups made irrelevant by the pragmatic exercise of power: justice is framed and administered by the victor, after the event.
Said it last week; the problem is the Republican Guard. Essentially a fundamentalist force set up to protect the theocratic leadership. They also have the Basij, a civilian militia, and the Qods an external special operations force. Can an untrained, disorganised civilian population remove their grip on power to achieve regime change. That is not certain.
How far can the Israelis and US reach into Iran to destabilise those groups? That would be unknown to us who rely on media, but while some small influence is likely. Sufficient to achieve the stated aim is another question altogether.
Do you mean the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC)?
The Republican Guard were in Iraq until they were overrun by the coalition forces - after their main field units were hugely reduced by massive aeriel bombardment: sound familiar?
Fanatics can be hard to deal with - see what happened to the SS during and after the Second World War - and given the ruthlessness already demonstrated, the US and Israel may simply keep smashing at them until they have no means for effective conventional resistance. How much they can be undermined may hinge on how the population react to what's going on. It may be the IRGC end up trying to fight on two fronts - domestically as the enforcers for the theocracy and externally as a combined arms force - and become too thin spread to be effective.
As to the commitment of the regular armed forces, who knows?
TG. Re your last para, the biggest military force is the Artesh, Irans conscript army. The extent of its loyalty to the fanatical mullahs in Tehran is questionable. It's telling that the late unlamented Khamenei did not use them to any great extent to recently slaughter street protestors, instead recruiting foreign mercenaries to assist his IRGG fanatical loyalists to do the dirty work. While Iranian males learn how to use firearms during army training, the public is not allowed to own them.
It is a big hunk of territory and the network to support the dictatorship and suppress any opposition, well entrenched and tuned after nigh on fifty years. While that military remains intact on the ground it is difficult to visualise a people’s uprising succeeding. Think Warsaw, in WW2. There may yet require to be land incursions but from who and where is hard to say. Except in Iraq, Libya & Syria once the door was kicked down the military collapsed fairly smartly.
FG. As you earlier posit, Persian culture is different in many respects from that of its Arab neighbours and because of this I doubt a repeat of the sudden regime collapses that happened in Iraq and Libya, even if the Iranian military continues to be degraded. The Iranian intelligentsia which facilitated the 1979 revolution and ascension of the Ayatollah for the most part has gone and no other groups or philosophies with sufficient societal reach to seriously challenge the mullahs, exists. It's telling that the latest protests were initiated by market shopkeepers over economic conditions, not philosophical nor religious.
Besides, the days when branding the conduct of a major power “illegal” could cause it the slightest embarrassment are long gone. We have it on the authority of no less a figure than the Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney...
Was about to point out Carney after reading the first para. Carney is the flavour-of-the-month among the liberal democratic ruling elite and barely a month ago clearly pointed out that "international law" and "rules-based order" have been nothing but a fraud that the Western nations have only accepted as its worked in their favor (incl Aotearoa). Helen Clark and others are bandying around the "illegality" of the strikes on Iran. There obviously is no consensus among the Western nations.
So much for Carney and taming Great Powers' contempt for international law:
Carney called Iran the "principal source of instability and terror throughout the Middle East" and said it must never be able to develop a nuclear weapon.
"Canada supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security."
https://www.nsnews.com/local-news/carney-says-canada-supports-us-action…
I suggest it's a different issue John. This is about dialling back a theocratic dictatorship with aspirations of ruling the Islamic world and perhaps starting what they see is the final war of Islam against the infidels, where there is an Islamic prophecy that says Islam wins. Like all dictatorships, they're not concerned with the cost in lives of what they are trying to achieve, and because they believe they are the word and will of Allah. after all if it is the will of Allah, what can go wrong? Oops!
The joint military assault on Iran by the United States and Israel has placed New Zealand in an awkward position. Viewed through the lens of international law the attack is unequivocally illegal.
UK Defence Secretary John Healey declined to say whether the latest US–Israeli strikes on Iran are lawful under international law, and instead stating that it is for Washington to explain the legal basis for what it did.
“It is for the US to set out the legal basis” is a classic diplomatic hedge: London avoids calling the strikes illegal, but also avoids putting its own legal stamp on them, which would carry consequences for future cases (e.g. Russia–Ukraine).
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/britain-says-it-is-us-set-out-legal-ba…
"Besides, the days when branding the conduct of a major power “illegal” could cause it the slightest embarrassment are long gone. We have it on the authority of no less a figure than the Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, that the world has regressed to that state of international relations where, as the Ancient Greek historian Thucydides put it: “The strong do what they can, while the weak endure what they must.”"
Ironically Trump again puts an exclamation mark after PM Carney's remark.
Helen Clark should be reminded that she is no longer the PM and no longer speaks for NZ. She should go back to Beijing and live there.
No.
She spoke the truth.
The 'rules-based-order' was always missing one word: Our...
Yes, it is gone. But the reason it is gone is that the excuses - WMD, communist, evil, nuclear threat, narco-whatever - are increasingly-obviously bull.
So the gloves are off and finesse has gone out the window. Was always going to happen when push came to shove.
Yes
In Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya, it suited the interests of both the Israelis and the Americans to simply walk away from the messes they had made of other people’s countries and let their traumatised populations spend the next few decades locked in bloody civil wars to determine who ruled over the ruins.
Israel has a US leader that gives them what they want – destabilising Iran for them. 50 Iranian school girls killed in a missile strike? – just collateral damage apparently.
Abolish the system that created the dictator. Design a new system that sustains personal freedom, encourages both public and private enterprise, and refuses to let fanatics take charge.
Yeah right.
She spoke the truth.
No. She spoke what she believed she thinks is the reality and what she thinks she has the authority to claim.
And she is no spokesperson for the Global South.
Oil to spike big this week and with it - inflation expectations!
The cost of debt will also soon spike too, as inflation will be up and out the gate, on any sustained hike in oil.
Totally ignorant piece from Trotter.
I suggest he reads Longhurst's Adventure in Oil - the 1950's history of BP (the innocence of the slant shows up clearly; the Brits were doing the local sooooo much good by sucking the oil out from under them...
Chris, nothing happens without energy; no life, no activity, no work is done. Nothing.
And nothing - repeat nothing - displaces fossil energy. We had a dream that we could seamlessly displace fossil with 'renewable' - the physics reality is that we cannot. Thus Trump; both elections and the direction. People who fixate on money don't get it. People who major in social interactions, don't either. But the fight now is over who gets what of the last half - the worst half - of the global fossil stock. Hint - the pipeline sabotage is absolutely part of the same game. As was Iraq. The modus operandi is always the same; a WMD-type accusation, the intrusion, the commandeering, the resultant social damage always unaddressed.
I know it's unsettling conscience-wise; we hang on the coattails of that aggression. But if you are going to comment, perhaps from a reality basis would be better?
NZ is irrelevant in any defence or military discussion. We have this 1960 attitude to nuclear energy and are living in the past and we all like it that way, its how we identify ourselves. We are so backward, you can't even mention the "N" word here.
We need to change our countries marketing slogan from "Clean Green NZ" as that is now discredited, to something much more appropriate: "Travel back in time visit NZ."
When people mix things - military vs energy, in your case - it is red flag territory.
There will be a personal bias/angst driving the comment, rather than a logical argument.
:)
Nobody - but nobody - has ever built a nuclear power-plant or a grid, without using fossil energy. Just sayin...
Bruce. Why would NZ need to consider nuclear when the gentailers are insisting they have more renewable generation either underway or ready to build than the nations total projected demand for the foreseeable future? Meridians CEO last week said they were encouraging offshore high users (presumably data centres) to set up here and soak up the excess capacity.
Who will pay to provide the excess capacity?
https://theconversation.com/nz-energy-crisis-electricity-demand-will-ju…
Assuming we continue with a capital based system it'll be users. The extent to which ordinary mortals like us subsidise the big end of town, including charges for upgrading lines, will be a debate to come.
You do realise we have excess capacity currently? The question is how can we most effectively cover peak demand or better yet, can we reduce peak demand?
The only sensible arguement for nuclear "energy" is for the facility to become a nuclear "power". Australia and NZ should seriously look at our strategic futures - PDK is correct and it will only get nastier. I would settle for an agrarian backwater from the 19th century, with nukes.
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