Pre-emptive attacks in international law are rarely justified. The threat must evince itself through an obvious intent to inflict injury, evidence preparations that show the threat to be what Michael Walzer calls a “supreme emergency”, and arise in a situation where risk of defeat would be dramatically increased if force is not used.
Reaching an assessment on that matter is almost impossible. Evidence of such a threat by the aggressor state is bound to be speculative, concealing other strategic objectives that make that action amount to illegal, preventive war. Israel’s ongoing attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure are taking place in the absence of nuclear weapons, motivated by the hypothetical scenario that such weapons would be irretrievably developed and used against the Jewish state. Iran, in other words, was being punished for a thought crime.
The Israeli Defense Forces released a statement expressing the rationale: “Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the Iranian regime are a threat to the State of Israel and a significant threat to the entire world. The State of Israel will not allow a regime whose goal is the destruction of the State of Israel to possess weapons of mass destruction.”
There is even a concession on the part of IDF officials that triumphant success in the operation is not assured; Israelis needed to brace themselves before the inevitable reaction. “I can’t promise absolute success,” declared Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir. Tehran “will attempt to attack us in response, the expected toll will be different to what we are used to.”
The Defence Minister Israel Katz offers some wishful thinking in justifying the attack. “We are now at a critical juncture. If we miss it, we will have no way to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons that will endanger our very own existence.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu preferred lashings of hyperbole. “If we don’t attack, then it’s 100% that we will die,” he declared in a video statement to the nation.
This is the language of self-denial, both on the issue of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear option indefinitely – an unsustainable policy in the absence of peaceful dissuasion – and the belief that such operations will result in some form of contained, well-behaved retaliation. With typical perversity, these attacks are taking place in step with demands by US President Donald Trump that Tehran resort to meek diplomacy, an effort that is bound to have been extinguished by these attacks.
And what of the threat posed by Iran? In March this year, the US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the assessment was “that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.” But Netanyahu had already given a directive in November 2024 to thwart alleged efforts by Tehran to build a nuclear device. “The directive,” he confirms, “came shortly after the assassination of [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah”.
The broader Israeli logic here is less the coherence of the nuclear threat than one of settling scores and crippling a rival it has long accused of directing operations against its interests, if not directly than through its proxy militias.
As for the logic of non-acquisition, not much can be made of it. The advent of the Colt 45 revolver in the late 1800s arguably calmed the American West by granting those with less power and influence a means of asserting their will against the powerful and landed. It became “the Peacemaker”, sometimes described as “the Great Equalizer.” As part of that same logic, the late international relations theorist Kenneth N. Waltz proposed that nuclear weapons made war less likely, believing that “the gradual spread of nuclear weapons is to be more welcomed than feared.” He even went so far as to argue in 2012 that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would “most likely […] restore stability to the Middle East.” It was Israel’s durable nuclear monopoly in the Middle East that “long fueled instability” in the region.
The invention of nuclear weaponry was a statement of intent that possessing such a weapon would be akin to acquiring the shielding protection of a patron deity. This is a lesson the Israelis should know better than most, having themselves stealthily acquired an undeclared nuclear inventory. To not have it would weaken you, diminish international standing, making the non-possessor vulnerable to attack.
North Korea learned this salutary lesson, motivated by two supreme examples: the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the US-led “Coalition of the Willing”, and the collective attack on Libya in 2011, ostensibly under the doctrine of responsibility to protect. The disarmament efforts made by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya rendered them vulnerable to attack. Lacking a terrifying deterrent, they were contemptuously rolled.
Attempts to control proliferation have been imperfect, largely because the nuclear option has never been entirely demystified. Despite the admirable strides made in international law to stigmatise nuclear weapons, best reflected in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, not to mention the tireless labours of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the nuclear weapons club remains a permanent provocation and incitement to non-nuclear weapons states. It is the red rag to the bull.
These attacks will do little to weaken the resolve of the mullahs in Teheran. They are roguish undertakings, murderous in their scope (the killing of scientists and their families stands out), and sneering of international law. Netanyahu’s absurd lecturing to the Iranian populace – we are bombing you to free you – will fall flat. Most consequential will be confirmation on the part of the Islamic State that acquiring a nuclear weapon is more imperative than ever.
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