Then came German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, quick to declare that Iran is not protected by international law, arguing that such rules lose their meaning when countries repeatedly violate them. As Ben Saul, a professor of International Law at the University of Sydney, puts it: “Preemptive war is clearly illegal under international law. “There’s no evidence that Iran has given an order to use weapons it doesn’t have against Israel or the US. Then there is the nuclear question—and Trump’s own role in creating the very crisis he now claims to solve in Iran. “One of the first things Trump did in his administration the first time around was to cancel the Iran nuclear agreement that President Obama created.

Source: The Express Tribune March 08, 2026 08:08 UTC