International law does not authorize States to resort to armed force except in cases of self-defense or aggression. The branch of law regulating the right to resort to armed force is commonly referred to as jus ad bellum . Since 1945, it is incorporated in the Charter of the United Nations and its collective security mechanism. But this concept of self-defense only allows measures that are “proportional” to the armed attack and necessary to respond to it.
The proportionality requirement also applies to reprisals after an attack. The principle of proportionality is now recognized as a rule of customary law, applicable in both international and non-international armed conflicts (Rule 14 of the 2005 ICRC customary IHL study).
The proportional nature of a reprisal in relation to the initial attack is the element that makes the distinction between a reprisal that is acceptable under the law of armed conflict and an act of revenge, which is always prohibited. Humanitarian law clearly establishes the responsibility of military commanders with regard to the respect for this principle.
The Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), adopted on 17 July 1998 and entered into force on 1 July 2002, also considers such acts as war crimes and includes them among the crimes over which it has jurisdiction.
The US has launched an air assault on some 85 Iran-linked targets in Iraq and Syria used by Iran-backed militias, in an opening salvo of retaliation for the drone strike that killed three US service members in Jordan last weekend.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) said its military forces struck more than 85 targets in the two countries “with numerous aircraft to include long-range bombers flown from the United States”.
“The air strikes employed more than 125 precision munitions,” it added in a statement.
CENTCOM said the facilities that were struck included command and control operations centres, intelligence centres, weapons storage sites and other facilities connected to the militias or the IRGC’s Quds Force, the Guard’s expeditionary unit that handles Tehran’s relationship and arming of regional groups.
Three US soldiers were killed and about 40 others injured in a drone attack on the military base known as Tower 22 near the Jordan-Syria border on Sunday 28 January 2024.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a coalition of Iran-linked groups, claimed responsibility for the drone attack.
US Central Command said the strikes were targeted at Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and affiliated militia groups. It said US military forces struck more than 85 targets including “command and control operations, centers, intelligence centers, rockets, and missiles, and unmanned aired vehicle storages, and logistics and munition supply chain facilities” belonging to militia groups and their IRGC sponsors.
Joe Biden warned in a statement released after the attacks began that “if you harm an American, we will respond”. The statement said: “The United States does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world. But let all those who might seek to do us harm know this: if you harm an American, we will respond.”
The US has said it has so far “hit exactly what we meant to hit”. Lt Gen Douglas Sims, director for operations on the joint staff, said the timing of the strikes was determined by the weather, with the best weather appearing on Friday. “The initial indications are that we hit exactly what we meant to hit with a number of secondary explosions associated with the ammunition and logistics locations,” he said.
At least 18 Iran-backed fighters have been killed in strikes in eastern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said. At least 26 important sites housing pro-Iran groups including weapons depots have been destroyed in raids striking a large swath of eastern Syria, stretching more than 62 miles (100km) from the city of Deir ez-Zor to Albu Kamal, near the Iraq border, the monitoring group told AFP.
An Iraqi military spokesperson has said US airstrikes were launched at Iraqi border areas, warning that the attacks could ignite instability in the region. Yahya Rasool said in a statement reported by Reuters: “These airstrikes constitute a violation of Iraqi sovereignty, undermine the efforts of the Iraqi government, and pose a threat that could lead Iraq and the region into dire consequences.”
US officials told CNN that the US had no plan to bomb Iran, which would represent a significant escalation. Administration officials have repeatedly stressed that Washington does not intend to go to war with Iran, despite the accusation that it had armed the groups behind the Tower 22 attack. Iran has also previously warned the US not to launch any direct strike on Iranian territory, saying if the US acts in this way its response will be swift and dramatic.
The US had warned it would carry out a series of reprisal strikes launched over more than one day. The US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, said on Friday: “This is the start of our response. The president has directed additional actions to hold the IRGC and affiliated militias accountable for their attacks on US and coalition forces. These will unfold at times and places of our choosing.”
US Central Command has said its forces conducted airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and affiliated militia groups.
The airstrikes were carried out at 4pm eastern time on Friday, 2 February, 2024, it said.
It said US military forces struck more than 85 targets including “command and control operations, centers, intelligence centers, rockets, and missiles, and unmanned aired vehicle storages, and logistics and munition supply chain facilities” belonging to militia groups and their IRGC sponsors.
On Friday, Syrian state media said that an “American aggression” on a number of sites in Syria’s desert areas and the Syrian and Iraqi border resulted in a number of casualties and injuries.
Iraqi security sources told Al Jazeera that six air strikes targeted a number of locations in the country.
“These airstrikes constitute a violation of Iraqi sovereignty … and pose a threat that could lead Iraq and the region into dire consequences,” Iraqi military spokesman Yahya Rasool said in a statement after the strikes.
“It is obvious that the airstrikes are deliberately designed to further inflame the conflict,” said Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. “By attacking, almost without pause, the facilities of allegedly pro-Iranian groups in Iraq and Syria, the United States is purposefully trying to drive the largest countries in the region into conflict.”
Russia also called an “urgent” United Nations Security Council meeting over the US strikes.
“We just demanded an urgent sitting of the UN Security Council over the threat to peace and safety created by US strikes on Syria and Iraq,” Moscow’s diplomat at the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, said on social media on Saturday.
The UK and UK launched a new series of strikes against Iran-linked Houthi targets in Yemen on Saturday, 3 February 2024 according to US officials, in what appeared to be a second day of retaliatory operations following a deadly attack on American troops last weekend. The latest strikes struck at least 30 Houthi targets in 10 different locations in Yemen, AP reported. They marked the third time the US and Britain had conducted a large, joint operation to strike Houthi weapon launchers, radar sites and drones.
US forces conducted strikes “in self-defence” against six Houthi anti-ship cruise missiles that were “prepared to launch against ships in the Red Sea” on Saturday, hours before the latest joint operation with the UK. The US has previously carried out more than 10 strikes against Houthi targets in the past several weeks, but they have failed to stop attacks by the group targeting commercial ships and warships in the Red Sea.
The US and UK carried out strikes against 36 targets linked to the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, hitting buried weapons storage facilities, missile systems, launchers and other capabilities, according to a joint statement, carried by Reuters.
Sky News has a bit more on the statement, reporting it said the strikes were “in response to a series of illegal, dangerous, and destabilising Houthi actions since previous coalition strikes on January 11 and 22, 2024, including the January 27 attack which struck and set ablaze the Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker M/V Marlin Luanda”.
Australia, Bahrain, Denmark, Canada, the Netherlands and New Zealand reportedly supported the latest strikes.
It is unclear how Tehran will respond to Saturday’s strikes, which do not directly target Iran but degrade groups it backs.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said in a statement carried by Reuters that Friday’s attacks in Iraq and Syria represented “another adventurous and strategic mistake by the United States that will result only in increased tension and instability”.
Iraq summoned the US charge d’affaires in Baghdad to deliver a formal protest after strikes in that country.
Houthi official Mohammed al-Bukhaiti says the Red Sea attacks will continue until Israel ends its assault on Gaza, amid Israeli air raids on Khan Younis and Rafah.
The death toll from air raids in eastern Rafah has risen to 24 people as Israel says it is planning a ground invasion of the dangerously overcrowded city.
Air attacks and shelling have also been reported in Khan Younis, including in the vicinity of the European Hospital.
At least 27,238 people have been killed and 66,452 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The death toll in Israel from the October 7 Hamas attacks stands at 1,139.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, questioned the effectiveness of the US bombings.
“The aim is to degrade their ability to strike over a longer period of time, albeit at the risk of starting a regional war. This is ultimately a suboptimal strategy. It would be more effective to reduce their interest in striking against the US … The most effective way to shift the interest of these militias is through a ceasefire in Gaza,” said Parsi.
“There is no escaping this reality: Nothing in the region is likely to de-escalate unless there is de-escalation in Gaza. Unfortunately, Biden’s approach thus far has been to avoid putting material pressure on Israel for a ceasefire.”
Joshua Landis, associate professor and director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, told Al Jazeera that politicians in Washington are pressuring Biden for a stronger response as the US presidential election looms.
“He has to respond, but at the same time he’s made it very clear he does not want to escalate, and that means two things; he can hit Syrians, that’s easy and nobody cares about the Syrian government, but the Americans do care about the Iraqi government.”
“America does not want to get ejected from Iraq, particularly not before the elections in November. So, it wants to be strong, but it doesn’t want to kill too many Iraqis.”
HA Hellyer, a military analyst at the UK-based think tank Royal United Services Institute, told Al Jazeera, adding that if the US wants to de-escalate and not go to war with Iran, the key to that is Gaza.
Washington has “failed to apply any real leverage in order to bring a ceasefire to Gaza, which I think would really diminish the tensions in the region and remove the fuel for this sort of escalation taking place, which is likely to continue over the coming days and weeks and beyond”, he said.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has backed the US-led air strikes on Syria, Iraq and Yemen. This is completely in line with Albanese’s government’s explicit “solidarity” with Israel.
“We support the actions of the United States. These are proportionate, retaliatory for the actions of Iran-backed organisations, and they are not an escalation,” Albanese told Australia’s national broadcaster on Sunday.
“We think that the United States has got it right. It’s important that, given the attacks that have occurred by groups backed by Iran, there be a response. There has been.”
Australia is one of six countries that provided assistance to the US and the UK as they carried out air strikes on what they said were Houthi targets in Yemen overnight.
The US House of Representatives set to vote next week on $17.6 billion of "aid" (aka weaponry) to Israel.
The investors behind the military industrial complex must be feeling rapturous delight. US overseas arms sales surged 16 percent to a record $238 billion in Fiscal Year 2023, with rising demands due to major global military conflicts, according to a US State Department fact sheet released on Monday. 5 February 2024.
Comments
Post a Comment