Trump's War on Iran "Does Not Stand Up Under International Law."
Global politics expert Professor Scott Lucas tells the Byline Times Podcast that US and Israeli invasion is illegal.
As the Middle East conflict intensifies and Sir Keir Starmer offers support to Donald Trump’s airstrikes – but only when they are “defensive” – geopolitics expert Scott Lucas has a simple insight which cuts through the fog of this escalating war. The attacks on Iran by the US and its ally Israel are illegal.
Lucas, Professor of US Politics and International Relations at UCD Clinton Dublin, cites the UN Charter and says the onslaught on the Islamic Republic has, “no standing under international law. The only grounds you would have for it, was if there was an imminent attack expected from Iran on Israel, in which case the Israelis and the United States could say that what in effect they were doing was a pre-emptive strike. But that certainly wasn’t the case. You don't even have a pretext here for legality. This is simply an exercise of power..."
Iran, he says, lacks the capability to directly threaten the States itself, a claim supported by last year’s US Defence Intelligence Agency report which estimated that Tehran would need another decade to develop inter-contintental ballistic missiles. And while Iranian presidents have previously spoken about “removing Israel from the map” there is no evidence the current government had plans to directly pursue that goal – not least because the country’s military capability was seriously degraded in last year’s 12 Day War when, just as now, it was attacked by Israel with US support.
“Iran, certainly in February 2026, was not on the verge of striking Israel,” Lucas declares. “You can say many things to try to justify the US/Israeli attacks, but you cannot say they were defensive. They are offensive attacks. And when you say that, as the lawyers to the UK Government made clear, this does not stand up under international law.”
One of the stated war aims of the US has been to curtail Iran’s nuclear programme, which was subject to an agreement signed with the Obama administration, alongside the UK, France, Russia, China and Germany in 2015. The Tehran Government promised to reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium for 15 years, in return for relief from economic sanctions. The deal held until President Trump unilaterally withdrew in 2018, leaving the issue to fester ever since.
Iran had engaged in what appeared to be meaningful negotiations over the issue last year and last month until – on both occasions – it was attacked by Israel, which then called on US support. Following last year’s joint attack, Trump even claimed that Iran’s nuclear capability had been ‘obliterated’. This begs the question of why he has chosen to target the country again on the same pretext. Could the US President have been ‘played’ by his hawkish Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu, who has now launched two assaults in nine months?
Lucas recalls that in 2025, “there had been five sets of talks on whether Iran would put limits on its nuclear programme,”
“Those talks were undermined not by the [Iranian] regime, but by the Israeli war. Here we go again in early 2026. Donald Trump is saying, ‘I can make peace with Iran.’ The latest set of talks was only last Thursday in Geneva. And then, within 48 hours, those discussions were just simply pushed aside.
“From the Israeli standpoint, they don’t want a settlement with Iran over the nuclear programme. They want the regime gone. Just gone.”
Despite Israel’s intentions, Lucas believes that following the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, Washington might settle for what he describes as “regime accommodation”, rather than regime change. There’s a potential parallel here with Venezuela, where the States recently removed President Nicholas Maduro, who it accused of “narco-terrorism.”
Lucas said: “They were talking about regime change in Venezuela for months. And then they go in and they kidnap President Maduro and we’re thinking, ‘this is the regime change, right? They’ll get the rest of the of Maduro’s group out, the Vice President, the Interior Minister, the Defence Minister’ And what we subsequently find out is, they didn’t topple the rest of the regime, because they couldn’t. They struck a deal with Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, where she effectively gave up Maduro. And if she’s giving up Maduro? Well, that means that she and the Trump folks are working together.
“Delcey Rodriguez, who was Vice President, is now the acting President, the Interior Minister is still there, the Defence Minister is still there. They’re not talking about putting the opposition in power in Venezuela now. All of a sudden it was like, ‘Okay, we’ve done this. We’ve established our dominance over that regime.’”
Lucas can see a similar outcome becoming possible in Iran. Rather than a complete overthrow of the government, more pliant ministers from the current administration might cling on to power, as long as they metaphorically bend the knee to Washington. This would no doubt come as huge disappointment to many Iranians who dream of living in a secular, democratic society, but while the US administration has voiced its hope that the populace will rise up and overthrow their government, this is a risky strategy, given the brutality with which the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp has put down previous unrest.
According to some estimates, 32,000 people were massacred following pro-democracy rallies earlier this year and, as Lucas observes, “the regime is digging in so far. They’re retaliating, and getting rid of a regime is really, really messy. If you don’t put troops on the ground, you’ve got no leverage there.”
Given Trump’s pre-election pledge to end ‘forever wars’ – as well as the bloody legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan – the US is highly unlikely to offer ground support to any rebellion. This leaves Lucas to envision the possibility of a transitional version of the current Iranian Government assuming control, “whether it’s a more accommodating cleric; whether it’s a political figure like Ali Larijani, former speaker of parliament, who was the Supreme Leader’s top political advisor; whether it’s the former President, Hassan Rouhani, who was very much a centrist and reached the 2015 deal over the nuclear programme.”
But, he warned, “it’s not going to happen immediately and in the meantime, who pays the price for this? A lot of those Iranians who do want change. They just don’t want it to happen through bombs.”
Listen to the full interview with Professor Scott Lucas on the Byline Times podcast with Adrian Goldberg.