International Law, the West Asia War, and the Burden of Principled Multilateralism
On February 28, 2026, a United States-Israeli airstrike killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran — along with senior members of his advisory council. The strike came in a war that had already claimed an estimated 1,255 lives. His son and successor, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, addressed the world on March 12, pledging to maintain the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and vowing what he called an “effective and regret-inducing defence.” A day before that statement, a bombing in Mubin killed an estimated 150 schoolgirls. Between these coordinates lies one of the gravest crises the post-1945 international legal order has faced — and the silence of its institutions is becoming structural.
The governing law is not obscure. Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. Article 51 permits self-defence only in response to an ongoing or imminent armed attack, subject to necessity, proportionality, and immediate reporting to the Security Council. The ICJ's judgment in Nicaragua v. United States (1986) authoritatively settled that even genuine security concerns cannot displace these procedural requirements. A pre-emptive offensive campaign, conducted without Security Council authorisation and unsupported by any credible Article 51 notification, falls outside the lawful use of force under the Charter. That this remains unaddressed in any binding multilateral forum is not a legal ambiguity — it is a political failure dressed as one.
The targeting of a sitting head of state compounds the legal violation. Under customary international law — reflected in the Vienna Convention framework and the Charter's foundational principle of sovereign equality under Article 2(1) — the deliberate killing of a foreign head of state constitutes an unlawful act independent of the jus ad bellum analysis. The Supreme Leader of Iran occupied a constitutional office. His killing was not incidental; it was the stated strategic objective. That this has not generated even a formal protest note from the majority of states in the UN General Assembly marks a qualitative shift in international legal culture: the targeted assassination of a head of state is being normalised as an instrument of statecraft.
The humanitarian law dimension is equally grave. The Mubin school bombing engages Article 51(2) of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits attacks directed against the civilian population as such, and Article 57, which imposes a positive obligation to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm. Under Article 8(2)(b)(i) of the Rome Statute, the intentional targeting of civilians constitutes a war crime. These are not aspirational principles. They are treaty obligations binding all parties to this conflict. The absence of a preliminary examination request before the International Criminal Court — under Article 15, which permits the Prosecutor to act proprio motu — is a failure of institutional will, not institutional incapacity.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz raises a distinct but urgent legal question. Under Part III of UNCLOS, the Strait is subject to the regime of transit passage. Article 44 expressly prohibits states bordering straits from suspending or hampering that passage. Iran's actions — confirmed IRGC attacks on cargo vessels, daily transits reduced to single digits, reports of mining in the approaches — constitute a clear breach of its UNCLOS obligations. Critically, this is an erga omnes obligation: it is owed not to any particular state but to the international community as a whole, and is enforceable by all.
It is here that India's conduct at the Security Council deserves both recognition and context. On March 12, India co-sponsored a resolution condemning any actions aimed at closing or obstructing international navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. The resolution passed 13-0. India's vote was legally correct — freedom of navigation through international straits is an obligation erga omnes, and India, which imports approximately half its crude oil and 90 per cent of its LPG through West Asian sea lanes, has a sovereign interest of the first order in defending it. Four Indian sailors have already been killed in IRGC attacks; a Thai-flagged vessel bound for Kandla was struck near Basra on March 12, killing one more. India's co-sponsorship was not merely geopolitical signalling — it was a substantive exercise of multilateral agency in defence of a rule that benefits every maritime economy on earth.
Where India's legal position must mature is in its scope. A Security Council member that condemns one set of Charter violations while maintaining studied silence on another does not weaken its legal credibility — but it does invite the charge that it is framing an erga omnes obligation selectively. The original strikes on Iranian territory, the bombing of civilian infrastructure including a school, and the assassination of a head of state each raise independent legal questions under the Charter, Geneva Conventions, and customary international law. India need not take a political side in this war to call those violations by their legal names. The distinction between legal assessment and political alignment is precisely the space that a truly non-aligned, rule-of-law-committed power inhabits. That is a tradition India has built over decades — and one with renewed strategic value in a multipolar world.
The structural remedy is clear. The Security Council's veto architecture, anticipated by the drafters, was specifically addressed by the Uniting for Peace Resolution of 1950, which permits the General Assembly to convene an Emergency Special Session when the Council fails to act due to great-power deadlock. Second, the Rome Statute's Article 15 authorises the ICC Prosecutor to open a preliminary examination into the Mubin school massacre without a state referral. Third — and here India's convening power is significant — the non-aligned and Global South states possess the numerical weight in the General Assembly to pass a resolution demanding a ceasefire grounded in specific legal obligations, not geopolitical horse-trading.
The law of nations has outlasted every major war of the modern era. What it cannot survive is the selective silence of states that understand its architecture and choose not to invoke it. The Charter is not silent. The schoolgirls of Mubin were not outside its protection. The Strait of Hormuz is not beyond its reach. The question — and it is addressed with particular urgency to a country of India's democratic tradition, civilisational weight, and genuine multilateral standing — is whether those who drafted the Charter, ratified it, and continue to teach it in their law faculties still intend to be bound by it equally.
Author is an Advocate Practicing at Delhi High Court. Views are personal.