Condemning the Counterstrike Without the Cause

the United Nations Security Council adopted a Bahrainisponsored resolution condemning Iran's retaliatory strikes against Gulf states and Jordan, declaring them a "breach of international law and a serious threat to international peace and security."The vote was 13-0, with China and Russia abstaining.The resolution has been widely discussed in terms of its political implications.This post is concerned with something different: its legal coherence.While the resolution is silent on the ongoing US-Israeli bombing campaign, which has killed over 1,300 Iranian civilians and destroyed thousands of civilian structures according to Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, the larger problem is structural.Under the ius ad bellum framework the resolution purports to apply, the lawfulness of a use of force cannot be assessed in isolation from the use of force that preceded it.By declaring Iran's strikes a "breach of international law" while refusing to make any determination about the strikes those attacks were responding to, the Security Council has produced a finding that is, as this post argues, both binding and methodologically incoherent.