The U.S. Air Force’s and Navy’s bombardment of Iran June 22 involved seven giant B-2 bombers flying from Missouri for 18 hours, and then dropping 14 giant, 30,000-pound earth-penetrating weapons. A Navy submarine fired Cruise missiles. Such acts of war are criminal conspiracies of the highest order, constituting a slew of domestic and international crimes.
The legal and political magnitude of the attacks can’t be exaggerated. Just imagine the U.S. response to a foreign air force’s attack on a U.S. nuclear weapons lab like Los Alamos, New Mexico or Oak Ridge, Tenn. UN experts condemned the attacks as naked aggression in violation of the UN Charter’s Article 2(4) whcih prohibits the threat or use of force against another state’s territorial integrity or political independence.
U.S. lawmakers called the strikes “patently illegal” and a dangerous escalation, because only Congress has the lawful authority to declare war, and because the 1973 War Powers Resolution requires a vote of the Senate if military attacks are launched without congressional authorization. For the U.S. bombarding of sovereign Iran to have been legal, it needed to be an act of self-defense, or needed UN Security Council approval, neither of which was the case.
White House reasons for military attacks on other countries historically employ lying and exaggeration. Trump claimed the three areas had been “obliterated.” Iran said its sites had sustained “superficial” damage with no “irreversible harm,” and a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report directly contradicted Trump’s typically fantastical puffery and braggadocio, finding that the sites were damaged but not destroyed, and that Iran’s uranium enrichment program was “delayed by a few months.” Trump soon had DIA Director Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse fired for showing the president is a liar.
Back in the real world, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency Rafael Mariano Grossi issued a dire warning about the dangers of bomb and missile attacks on nuclear projects.
“Such attacks have serious implications,” Grossi said, adding, “Attacks on nuclear power plants or spent fuel pools could release large amounts of fission products, such as cesium-137 and iodine-131, with far-reaching contamination.”
Recalling that the shooting war in Ukraine involves catastrophic risks to operating nuclear power reactors, Grossi warned that, “Even well-protected facilities can fail under extreme external force, leading to core meltdowns or other severe accidents. A severe radiological event could necessitate widespread evacuations and long-term health impacts from radiation exposure.” ⸺ JML
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