Qassem Soleimani, Commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, was
killed in the US air strike in Baghdad, the attack was ordered by President
Donald Trump. His killing has instantly
upped the military stakes in the region. Some believe that his killing was an
adventurist step that will increase tensions throughout the region and make the
world even more dangerous. Others believe that the incident opens the doors of
the region to all possibilities, except peace and stability and United States
will have to bear the responsibility for that. Let us review what the western
media has to say.
According to media reports, Trump administration has
justified killing of Soleimani as an act of self defense. This announcement
came in response to the accusations that United States has violated
international law and concerns raised by legal experts and a senior UN rights
investigator.
According to Reuters, Republican and Democratic lawmakers dispute
the wisdom of the attack. Some legal experts questioned whether Trump had the
legal authority to target Soleimani on Iraqi soil without the permission of
Iraq’s government, and whether it was legal under international and US law.
Iraq’s prime minister said Washington had with the attack
violated a deal for keeping US troops in his country, and several Iraqi
political factions united in a call for American troops to be expelled.
The UN Charter generally prohibits the use of force against
other states but there is an exception if a state gives consent to the use of
force on its territory. Legal experts said the absence of consent from Iraq
makes it difficult for the United States to justify the killing.
Yale Law School professor Oona Hathaway, an international
law expert, said on Twitter that the available facts “do not seem to support”
the assertion that the strike was an act of self-defense, and concluded it was
“legally tenuous under both domestic and international law.”
The Pentagon said targeting Soleimani was aimed at deterring
“future Iranian attack plans,” while Trump said the Iranian general was
targeted because he was planning “imminent and sinister” attacks on US diplomats
and military personnel.
Robert Chesney, a national security law expert at the
University of Texas at Austin School of Law, said the administration’s best
argument on the UN Charter issue is self defense. “If you accept that this guy
was planning operations to kill Americans, that provides the authority to
respond,” he said.
Scott Anderson, a former legal adviser to the US Embassy in
Baghdad under Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, said Trump’s justification so
far under international law is questionable, but he could try to argue that the
Iraqi government was either unwilling or unable to deal with the threat posed
by Soleimani, giving the United States the right to act without Iraq’s consent.
Article 51 of the U.N. Charter covers an individual or
collective right to self-defense against armed attack. The United States used
the article to justify taking action in Syria against Islamic State militants
in 2014. The US troops in Iraq had been fighting Islamic State, and about 5,000
troops remain, most of them in an advisory capacity.
A strategic framework agreement signed in 2008 between
Washington and Baghdad called for close defense cooperation to deter threats to
Iraqi “sovereignty, security and territorial integrity,” but prohibited the
United States from using Iraq as a launching point for attacks on other
countries.
Under historic norms of international law, a country can
defend itself preemptively if it acts out of necessity and responds
proportionally to the threat.
Agnes Callamard, the U.N. special rapporteur on
extra-judicial executions, questioned whether the attack met this threshold.
The targeting of Soleimani “appears far more retaliatory for
past acts than anticipatory for imminent self-defense,” she said. “Lawful
justifications for such killings are very narrowly defined and it is hard to
imagine how any of these can apply to these killings.”
Democratic lawmakers called on Trump to provide details
about the imminent threat that he said Soleimani represented.
“I believe there was a threat, but the question of how
imminent is still one I want answered,” Senator Mark Warner, the Democratic
vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Reuters.
Other critics raised questions about Trump’s authority to
kill Soleimani under US law, and whether he should have acted without first
notifying Congress.
Legal experts noted that recent US presidents from both
parties have taken an expansive view of their unilateral ability to
preemptively engage in force, including through targeted killings, a view
bolstered by executive branch lawyers in successive administrations.
In the case of Soleimani, the administration’s self-defense
arguments may hinge on disclosing specific knowledge of his imminent plans to
attack Americans.
Self-defense could allow the administration to act without
having to first notify Congress or act under a prior congressional
authorization for the use of military force, Chesney said.
Democratic lawmakers did not defend Soleimani, who US
officials have said is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, but
they called on Trump to consult with Congress going forward.
“This administration, like all others, has the right to act
in self-defense,” said Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a former Central Intelligence
Agency analyst who worked in Iraq focusing on Iranian-backed militias. “But the
administration must come to Congress immediately and consult.”
