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.
1 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.
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