Doctrinal Shift In War Ethics

The pre-emptive decapitation attack on the top leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran on February 28 has not only dangerously escalated the long-simmering conflict in West Asia, but it has also re-scripted the existing rulebook of inter-state war.  In addition, this incident has also set an alarming precedent by killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest spiritual leader of Iran, together with 44 other military and political leaders. 

As the war continues to escalate through massive aerial bombing from Israel and the United States and equally intense retaliatory missile and drone attacks from Iran on the military targets in Israel and the American airbases scattered over several Gulf countries, the moral fabric of statehood is wearing thin.  For the six days, devastating military attacks are being directed to erode each other's combat capabilities with merciless precision but the belligerents hardly care to frame their war efforts within the contours of civilisational values embraced by the human society for eons.

Tactical policy 

 Preemptive decapitation attack is not new. It is a well-worn-out tactical policy that has been applied against adversaries in military operations for a long historical period. Japan's aerial bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 was a preemptive strike which had provoked America to enter the Second World War. Operation Barbarossa in 1941, in which Germany invaded Russia and suffered a devastating defeat, was a pre-emptive attack. For Israel, preemptive attacks on its enemies have remained more of a norm than an exception. Before the current joint attack on Iran, Israel had mounted a preemptive attack against Egypt in 1967, Iraq in 1981, Syria in 2007 and Iran in 2025.

 Despite the existence of numerous precedents of preemptive attacks in history, never before had such attacks been subjected to as scathing a moral scrutiny as the one under discussion.  Of all the devastating consequences of this war, which are still unfolding, the assassination of Khamenei is being criticised as an egregious moral failure of the invading countries amidst the shockwaves of grief and anger overwhelming the entire Islamic world.  In sharp contrast, the USA's portrayal of Khamenei as 'one of the most evil people of the world', and Israel's reaction to his assassination as "a mortal blow to the axis of evil", have met with global condemnation from global leaders and intellectuals.

 Russian President Vladimir Putin described it as "a cynical murder" and a "violation of all standards of human morality and international law".  China condemned it as "a trampling on the aims and principles of the UN Charter". Iranian-American historian and sociologist Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, who is said to have been on a death row in Iranian regime, also opposed it saying, "I cannot find any reason to celebrate the assassination of Khamenei as it's a part of a package because it is also a part of the killing of school children, innocent people and attacks on hospitals. It is not in America's interest. It only realises the desire of Israel, which is in favour of forever war".

As we see a total moral eclipse in the dominant Western narrative concerning the ongoing war, Iran has strongly raised ethical questions to counter the hostile policy that the Western powers are relentlessly pushing against it. Iran has suffered two ruthless decapitation attacks against it in which it lost a staggering number of top political and military leaders. During the twelve-day war that had taken place in June last year,  the USA claimed that it obliterated the nuclear facilities, which it said Iran was running in Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow, to the security threat to Israel.  

But strangely, the US again played the same refrain once again to justify the killing of Iran's revered spiritual leader and the decapitation of its military leadership, exposing the moral shallowness of its war policy.  Killing religious leaders and leading scientists as a means of furthering war is being condemned by the global intellectual community. Iran has accused the US of practicing duplicity in the field of diplomacy.  It organised a pre-emptive attack on Iran while engaging Iranian diplomats in a series of false negotiations in Oman and Switzerland.  

Treacherous operation 

The Islamic Republic says it was pursuing diplomacy and negotiation to settle the nuclear issue with total honesty but the US treacherously launched what it calls 'Operation Epic Fury', pushing the entire Gulf Region to chaos. We live in the 21st century, where all the countries of the world exist as part of a rules-based order. In the present global context, the inter-state relations cannot be guided by raw power alone, nor do states reconcile with a status of subjugation to a superpower. 

Moreover, the handling of issues concerning war and peace requires extremely careful calibration between consent, consensus and collaboration. If the accepted norms and values are discarded and overwhelming power is unleashed to subdue sovereign countries, instead of wresting benefits from dialogue, diplomacy and negotiation, it will be difficult to achieve lasting peace and stability in the world. The rapidly worsening war scenario in West Asia shows that interstate relations should be handled within ethical boundaries; failing to do so will only erode trust in global institutions and push the localised conflict to an ever higher spiral of wider and more devastating conflicts.

(Dr. Bharadwaj is a former ambassador and former chairperson of Gorkhapatra Corporation. Bhaaradwajnarad@gmail.com.)