The U.S. government justified the strike as an act of self-defense, saying that Qassem Soleimani, the leader of an elite Iranian military and intelligence unit, had been plotting attacks on Americans – an allegation that few analysts seriously doubt, given his track record as the architect of Iranian attacks abroad. […]
”We have carried out the attack on the territory of a state that plainly did not give us permission,” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, a law professor and an expert on international disputes at the University of Notre Dame. ”The attack was unlawful, the assassination was not justifiable.” The U.S. government doesn’t see it that way, and hasn’t for a long time, under both Democratic and Republican administrations. ”The U.S. government does not believe it is bound by human rights law treaties vis-à-vis our operations overseas,” said Bobby Chesney, the James A. Baker III Chair in the Rule of Law and World Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin. Läs artikel