US-Israel attack on Iran was inevitable

As the US and Israel attack Iran and many of its people are conflicted about what should happen to their government, no patriotic Iranian welcomes the bombing of their country on the orders of the likes of US President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Trump sounded unhinged in his verbal attack on Iran that accompanied the US military operation with the Israelis, who appeared to have bounced him yet again into an attack while he was negotiating with the Iranians – presumably in good faith. An attack was inevitable given the deployment of two American aircraft carriers with their support ships and aircraft to the Arabian and the Mediterranean seas to the south and east of Iran, but it does not look as though its timing was of Trump’s choosing.

But despite Trump’s shrill calls to the Iranian people to rise against their government, they must be apprehensive as they await their fate with little love for their government and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRG) and fear and distrust of the US and Israel.

According to Trump the Iranians have a nuclear weapons programme and were not prepared to give it up. The Iranian attitude to nuclear weapons is a lot more nuanced than that of the US that both possesses and is the only country to have used nuclear weapons. Iran’s approach was originally set by the father of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini before he died in 1989 who believed that nuclear weapons are forbidden in Shia Islam – he said they are haram.

Shia Islamic law opinion on nuclear weapons has been developed and refined since Khomeini’s time. The use of nuclear weapons is still forbidden, but having nuclear weapons as a deterrent is not the same as the use of nuclear weapons. The current attitude is that possession of nuclear weapons for self defence is no longer thought to be haram.

This conclusion chimes with customary international law. In an advisory opinion in 1996 the International Court of Justice refused to rule as unlawful the use of nuclear weapons in self defence against armed attack threatening the survival of the nation.

The trouble is that the US and the EU believe Iran and the IRG have a terrorist mentality and cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons, lest they use them to terrorise their region and the world. 

The Iranian government would argue that the two states terrorising its region at present are the US and Israel, and it is the fact they have just embarked on an attack on Iran in breach of international law since neither were under imminent attack from Iran.

It is surprising that Iran has no allies in the region to come to its assistance. It is on good terms with Russia and China but they are not in any kind of military alliance with Iran. The Gulf Arabs and Saudi Arabia, for whom the attack on Iran would destabilise the whole region around the Persian Gulf, were dead against this military action, but the US-Israeli axis has different priorities and Arab concerns are always secondary however much money they invest in the US.

Not only has Iran no military alliance but the whole of Europe is ill disposed towards its government. On January 29, 2026 the EU designated the IRG as terrorist for intimidating its own population by killing thousands of innocent protestors last January. Iran conceded that many protestors died during the recent protests, but blamed foreign interference in its internal affairs that encouraged violent protests.

Designating a group as terrorist in EU law means that all IRG assets in the EU are frozen and financial dealings criminalised and individuals associated with IRG sanctioned. Iran protested that as the IRG was a state security organisation it could not be a terrorist group. But under EU law the test is whether a group engages in terrorist acts – defined as acts that seriously intimidate a population at home or abroad.

No one disputes a state’s power to suppress violent protests, but killing thousands of protestors was obviously disproportionate and the EU concluded that the actions of the IRG were sufficiently intimidatory to justify designating it as a terrorist organisation.

Iran retaliated shortly after the IRG was proscribed by the EU. It designated all the armed forces of EU member states as terrorist. Under Iranian law the consequences are also asset freezes and banking bans as well as criminal terrorist offences for members and supporters of designated terrorist states.

Terrorist criminal offences in Iran are punishable by death or life imprisonment and in time of war membership of a designated terrorist organisation carries with it denial of prisoner of war (POW) status.

While the US and Israel have now attacked Iran and the EU designated the IRG a terrorist organisation, the UK has not yet proscribed it as terrorist and has not declared its support for an obviously unlawful use of force by its favourite allies. Could it be that this time it is not persuaded that it is necessary and proportionate to attack Iran? That would be out of character; the best that can be expected from the UK is to keep its military bases in Cyprus neutral this time.

As for the Cypriots themselves, the best approach for them is to stay close to Europe and give the US and Israel a wide berth in what is obviously an illegal war.