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How the Israeli-US alliance destroyed international law and the UN system

  • Robert Inlakesh Robert Inlakesh
  • Source: Al Mayadeen English
  • 2 Jul 2025 23:48
  • 4 Shares
7 Min Read

The joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran mark the collapse of the post-WW2 international order, with blatant violations of the UN Charter, disregard for international law, and the silencing of global institutions meant to uphold peace and justice.

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  • How the Israeli-US alliance destroyed international law and the UN system
    By undermining the United Nations, international law and human rights organisations, the Israelis and American regime have destroyed the progress created in the wake of Nazism's defeat (Illustrated by Ali Al-Hadi Chmeiss to Al Mayadeen English)

The joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran were the final nails in the coffin of the post-WW2 international order. The United Nations Charter and International Law have been systematically dismantled over the past 21 months, yet even the Secretary General fell silent in the moment of truth.

On June 13, the Israeli surprise attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran represented a clear violation of Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter. Then, on June 22, the United States did the very same thing.

Back in 2003, there was widespread outrage at the American decision to invade Iraq. The decision to topple the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein lacked the relevant United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution enabling the military assault. 

Despite the lack of culpability for the Bush Jr. administration at the time, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan did declare that the United States had violated the UN Charter and the move was also preceded by some of the world's largest anti-War protests.

Yet, this time, the US and Israeli attacks on Iran were not met with a declaration from the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres. In fact, the UN official merely condemned all sides equally as the developments occurred and called the “escalation” “deeply alarming”.

What’s more is that in the build up to the Iraq invasion, the US did actually achieve one UNSC resolution against Baghdad, but did not manage to get the required second resolution that enabled military action. In this case, both the Israeli regime and US simply attacked Iran without any effort to secure UN resolutions of any kind.

American President Donald Trump and Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu, declared that Iran is moving towards acquiring a nuclear weapon, without providing any evidence and in contradiction of US intelligence estimates that were published back in March.

What these acts of aggression and violations of international law proved, was that there is no longer any need to even convince the international community or even US public of the reasons behind military action. US law did not even matter in this case, nor did global public opinion, and regrettably the anti-war protests in places like London and Washington DC numbered in the mere hundreds.

We have now reached a stage where the UN and the legal system which governs its organs, is dead and irrelevant. The system that was built in the aftermath of the Second World War, as an effort to prevent the horrors of genocide, breach of borders, nuclear war and various other atrocities, has conclusively collapsed.

Since October 7, 2023, the world we now all live in has been significantly altered and there isn’t even a semblance of legitimacy to any legal or diplomatic avenues for solving global conflict when major military powers choose to wage war. 

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Why has the international order collapsed? Zionists decided the law no longer applies and their cowardly lackeys in the collective West went along with whatever they were ordered.

In early 2024 the International Court of Justice (ICJ), gave a preliminary ruling in favour of South Africa’s case that argued the Zionist regime was committing genocide in Gaza. The ICJ ruling also came with provisional measures that ordered the Israelis to take measures that would have ended the bloodshed. The Israelis simply called the World Court anti-Semitic and escalated their genocide instead.

The ICJ, which is the most powerful legal body on the planet and is supposed to hold nations accountable for their actions, was rendered useless beyond establishing the facts for the global public. 

Then we have all the Human Rights Organisations. All of the major relevant NGO’s like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and even the Israeli B’Tselem rights group, concluded that the Israelis were committing genocide, manufacturing famine and were responsible for just about every crime known to man. Beyond shaping public opinion, they too were rendered useless.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Rome Statute that governs it, also have been undermined and rendered almost useless, as the only ones being held accountable for its arrest warrants issued against the Israeli PM and his former Defence Minister, are ICC staffers and its chief prosecutor Kareem Khan.

There were of course governments that did attempt to stand up to the Israeli genocidal machine, yet the Zionist regime hinges upon support from Western European nations and the US, which all continued to not only supply weapons to the Israeli military, but directly participated in operations against Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iran.

Even the alleged fight against Daesh on the West’s behalf was exposed during the past 21 months as a fraud. Not only has Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bragged about arming and fundings a Daesh-linked militia group in the Gaza Strip, but the collective “West” accepted former Daesh commander, turned leader of Al-Qaeda in Syria, Ahmed al-Shara’a, as the new Syrian President.

Since the fall of the former Syrian leadership of Bashar al-Assad, Daesh has reemerged inside Syria and began to expand once again in West Asia and North Africa. On the note of terrorism, the Western corporate media all fell in line to endorse the pager-explosive attack in Lebanon - which injured 3,000 people and murdered civilians. 

Even former head of the CIA, Leon Panetta described the Mossad operation as terrorism, yet the media outlets that were long held up as the Gold Standard of Western journalism published article after article praising the alleged genius of the operation. Today, corporate media commentators like Piers Morgan, continue to uphold that the pager attack was an example of a pinpoint targeting of Hezbollah, which is objectively false. They simply ignore the broader ramifications that this terrorist attack has for the global technology supply chain.

All these moves by the US led imperial alliance, which includes its propaganda machine, culminated in the display of total disregard for international law that we witnessed when Iran was illegally attacked. This represents the death of the post-WW2 order, which was created with the idea of preventing the crimes of the Second World War from ever being repeated. We have therefore entered an era where Nazi style expansionism and any war crime is accepted with no significant pushback.

By undermining the United Nations, international law and human rights organisations, the Israelis and American regime have destroyed the progress created in the wake of Nazism's defeat. The irony is that these are the two powers that never shut up about their opposition to the Nazis, in fact, the Zionist Entity predicates its “right to exist” on the mantra of “never again”.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Mayadeen’s editorial stance.
  • war on Iraq
  • Israel
  • United Nations
  • US
  • Iran
Robert Inlakesh

Robert Inlakesh

Political Analyst, Journalist, and Documentary Filmmaker.

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