Iran, Hormuz and the law

Iran, Hormuz and the law

The FUKUS Three (France, UK and US) are getting worried. Certain sectors of the Iranian authorities have hinted that the Islamic Republic could decide to close the Straight of Hormuz. The reaction? Sabre rattling and cries that such an act would be "illegal". Interesting word, from these three...

Illegal? How interesting. What was the war in Iraq if not illegal? Did Saddam Hussein have Weapons of Mass Destruction, which posed a "direct and immediate threat" to the USA and its allies? OK then, where are they?

Yet the war was launched outside the auspices of the UNSC, and hundreds of thousands of people were murdered as a result of NATO's action. Was it then "legal" to open the concentration camp in Abu Ghraib, Baghdad? Was it "legal" to urinate in food? Was it "legal" to illegally detain civilians? Was it "legal" to rape female detainees? Was it "legal" to sodomise male detainees?

Was it not illegal to deprive detainees of sleep, was it not illegal to water-board people, was it not illegal to imprison and torture people on the CIA flights? How legal is the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay? How legal is it to torture people, hold them without accusation or due process or access to lawyer or family or telephone?

When the FUKUS Three, the two ex-colonial powers the UK and France and their former colony(ies), the USA, decided to attack Libya, how legal was that? Did they not flout the law by invading without a separate UN Resolution, as per the UN Charter, did they not break the law by invading without convening the UNSC Military Committee, did they not flout the terms of UNSC Resolutions 1970 and 1973 (2011)?

Was it legal to breach the Geneva Conventions by strafing civilian structures in Libya with military hardware? Was it legal to target the water supply, depriving babies of water "to break their backs"? Was it legal to attack the electricity grid?

How legal was it to murder the grandchildren of Colonel Gaddafi, did they pose any sort of threat or were they a part of the command chain, and if not why was there not even the decency of an apology? Was it not illegal to place boots on the ground in Libya, was it not illegal to arm terrorists and take sides in an internal conflict, was it not illegal to support terrorist elements on NATO's own terrorist watch lists?

So isn't the word "illegal" a bit much coming from the three pariah states of the international community, two former imperial powers specialists in massacres and one monster, the product of the former two? Suppose instead of threatening Iran, they sat down in a civilised fashion and suppose they addressed the point that if Israel has nukes, then...

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
Pravda.Ru