UN experts urge Israel, Iran to de-escalate conflict

GENEVA

UN experts on Tuesday stressed that retaliatory military attacks between Israel and Iran violate "the right to life and must cease immediately."

"All countries are prohibited from arbitrarily depriving individuals of their right to life in military operations abroad, including when countering terrorism,” said the human rights experts including Ben Saul, Morris Tidball-Binz, Javaid Rehman, Livingstone Sewanyana, and Cecilia M. Bailliet.

“Killings in foreign territory are arbitrary when they are not authorised under international law," they noted in a statement.

The experts added: "Israel does not appear to have been exercising self-defence on 1 April because it presented no evidence that Iran was directly committing an 'armed attack' on Israel or sending non-state armed groups to attack it."

Israel has not provided any legal justification for the strike or reported it to the Security Council, as required by Article 51 of the UN Charter, according to the experts.

They noted that "illegal force" was used not only against Iran’s armed forces but also against Syrian territory.

The experts said Iran’s response was also "a prohibited use of force under international law."

"Israel’s strike on 1 April may have been serious enough to qualify as an 'armed attack' on Iran, since it targeted senior military commanders and diplomatic premises.

"Yet Iran had no right of self-defence on 13 April because Israel’s attack concluded on 1 April," they said, adding: "Self-defence is only lawful where it is necessary to stop a continuing armed attack. Forcible retaliation, punishment or deterrence are illegal."

The experts called on the UN Security Council to live up to its responsibility to respond effectively to any state whose actions are a threat to international peace and security.

"This latest round of violence was predictably fuelled by decades of impunity for state violations of a most fundamental global rule: the prohibition on the use of force," they said.

Iran on Saturday launched an airborne attack on Israel in retaliation for an April 1 airstrike on its diplomatic compound in the Syrian capital. It reportedly fired more than 300 drones and missiles, with almost all intercepted by the air defense systems of Israel and its allies – the US, France, and the UK.