Asia Pacific Report
New Zealand’s weak response to the unprovoked and illegal United States and Israel attacks on Iran at the weekend has stirred strong criticism from many quarters.
A former New Zealand prime minister, Helen Clark, who also held a top United Nations position for eight years, labelled the government’s response “a disgrace”.
“In the absence of an imminent threat to the security of the United States and Israel, their armed attacks on Iran are illegal under international law,” she said. “They have no legitimate claim to invoking a right of self-defence.”
Clark was a Labour prime minister in New Zealand from 1999 to 2008 and administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) from 2009 to 2017.
Other critics of New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ joint statement today condemning Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Israel and on US assets in the Gulf States included the opposition Green Party, a geopolitical strategic analyst, and a Palestine justice advocate, warning that Washington and Tel Aviv were risking a risky power vacuum in Iran and chaos across the Middle East with democracy unlikely to succeed.
Luxon and Peters singled out Iran for criticism in their statement while virtually ignoring the fact that Israel and the US had initiated hostilities with their sudden attack, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior regime figures, while Washington was still engaged with Tehran in negotiations about a possible nuclear agreement.
— Winston Peters (@NewZealandMFA) February 28, 2026
“We condemn in the strongest terms Iran’s indiscriminate retaliatory attacks on Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan,” they said. “We cannot risk further regional escalation, and civilian life must be protected.”
In Clark’s response, she also shared on social media a statement from The Elders, an independent advocacy group linking senior public figures including herself, which condemned the military strikes by the US and Israel as a “threat to regional and global security”.
“History shows that wars to force regime change deliver neither democracy nor stability,” said The Elders chair Juan Manuel Santos.
In absence of an imminent threat to security of US & Israel, the armed attacks on Iran are illegal under international law. The Iranian regime is a vicious theocracy which has caused huge trauma to its people. But that isn’t a reason for a breach of Iran’s sovereignty. @TheElders pic.twitter.com/zBeJn9jQ1m
— Helen Clark (@HelenClarkNZ) February 28, 2026
“Trump and Netanyahu’s unilateral attack on Iran must be condemned as an illegal and unprovoked act against the people of the region and any genuine pathway to peace,” opposition Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson said.
“This latest escalation in aggression is part of a decades-long pattern of behaviour of the US dragging the region into more wars, violence, and bloodshed.”
“First the US kidnaps the president of a sovereign state after killing more than a score of civilians on the open seas without warrant or evidence of wrongdoing,” said 36th Parallel Assessments director Dr Paul G Buchanan. “Now it kills the head of state and supreme religious leader of another sovereign state, teaming up with a regime credibly accused of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank in order to do so.”
He said the “selective unilateral application of force” without imminent threat from either country “demonstrates two things: 1) the US and Israel have gone rogue; and 2) in doing so they have set a dangerous precedent for others to follow suit (think China with regard to Taiwan)”.
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-leader John Minto compared the current crisis with 1951 when Iran held its first democratic elections and elected its first democratic government led by Mohammad Mosaddegh as prime minister.
“Two years later the US and UK put in place Operation Ajax which overthrew this democratically elected government because the Iranians had nationalised the extraction and export of Iranian oil.
“How dare the Iranians take control of their own resources!” Minto added in a statement.
“This first democratic government in Iran was replaced by the autocratic rule of the US-friendly Shah.
“Today the US and Israel have attacked Iran yet again because Iran supports the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom from Israel’s genocidal occupation of Palestine and its ethnic cleansing and theft of Palestinian land.
“The US and Israel have never been interested in the democratic freedoms of Iranians. They want Iranians to live under the dictatorship of a US-bought leadership — just as the people of Arab countries across the Middle East suffer today.”
Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz
