If Iran succeeds in extracting reparations for the damage done to it in the US-Israeli war, it will be a world historic moment.

Iran may be bloodied but it remains unbowed and is seeking compensation from the Arab states over “direct involvement” in the US-Israeli war of aggression.

Iran sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres this month outlining its claim against Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan. They also intend to apply a transit toll on the Strait of Hormuz as an instrument of restorative justice.

Under international law — if anyone still pays attention to such things — the Iranians have a strong case. What will determine if justice is done, however, is victory over the aggressors.

More than 100 US-based international law experts, professors, and practitioners have released a letter stating that the United States and Israel violated the UN Charter by launching strikes on Iran on February 28. The signatories include leaders of prominent international law associations and former Judge Advocates General — the top legal advisors to the US armed forces. They cite the complete lack of evidence of an imminent Iranian threat that could support a self-defence claim.

Under international law the aggressor is responsible for all the destruction that follows. The white-dominated Western countries like the US, Australia and New Zealand should stop banging on about the illegality of Iran taking control of the Strait and address the root causes of why it did so.

The case against the Arab states
In the early days of the war, radar systems operating from these countries were fully engaged in the war. Thousands of US troops were operating from 14 US bases in their territories.

Attack planes, refuelling planes and aerial surveillance planes all operated from bases like Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd Air Base, as reported by Middle East Eye. Major Western outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times documented missile launches and multiple other ways Jordan and the Gulf States were directly involved in the war despite the mainstream media portraying them as innocent bystanders and victims of Iranian aggression.

Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth have both described the Gulf States as fighting “shoulder to shoulder” with the US and Israel. In filing their letter with the UN the Iranians have also provided satellite and other data to support their claim.

Iran argues that the Arab states, under international law, are co-belligerents. The UN’s International Law Commission (ILC) Articles on State Responsibility (2001) defines the concept of “Aid or Assistance” in the commission of an internationally wrongful act. It is not hard for Iran to prove that these states did not maintain neutrality.

In reality, for Iran to get justice, deterrence and reparations, there is no international body or court to turn to; it must win by making a continuation too painful for the aggressors.

There are signs it might just succeed. Iran has achieved something few on the Western side anticipated: the destruction of most of the US bases. Marc Lynch, director of the Project on Middle East Political Science at George Washington University told Middle East Eye, “The bases around the region are suffering real damage, and I think it’s very unlikely that we’re ever going to go back and put our Fifth Fleet back in Bahrain. It’s too vulnerable.

“This is the physical architecture of American primacy, and Iran has essentially rendered it useless in the span of a month.”

The War on Iran is a long way from finished. Even if the ceasefire holds, the Israelis and Americans will see this only as a stage in their multi-decade project to wreck Iran as a major regional competitor.

The victims are usually the ones who must pay
At the end of imperial wars, the victims are traditionally made to pay.

In the 19th Century, the British fought the Chinese over the latter’s resistance to the British government’s lucrative opium trade into China. The imperialists won and imposed the infamous Unequal Treaties on China, including awarding to Britain the island of Hong Kong.

Queen Victoria even shamelessly named a stolen Pekingese dog “Lootie” after the British sacking of Beijing’s Summer Palace, one of the great cultural crimes of history.

When the genocidal US war on Vietnam ended, decades of harsh US sanctions on their victims began. As the US moved towards accepting it had lost the war, Nixon promised $3.3 billion in reconstruction aid under the Paris Peace Accords (1973). The Americans never paid a cent.

The US also pressured the IMF, World Bank, and UN agencies to block Hanoi’s applications for loans, seriously retarding reconstruction.

When the slave revolt in Hispaniola (present day-Haiti) drove out the French, the Western powers returned in force a few years later and imposed harsh “reparations” for being dispossessed of their “stolen” land and humans. From 1825, Haiti was forced to pay 150 million francs to France to compensate former slaveholders for their “lost property”. This debt was only fully paid off in 1947, permanently crippling the nation.

The US-Israeli war on Iran is something different. Iran, like the Vietnamese, the Algerians and the Indians may have what it takes to prevail over imperial aggression. Iran may also have something different: the power to impose reparations on the aggressor.

Across the West we are subjected to the astonishing chutzpah of Western leaders decrying the “illegality” of Iran’s declaration of sovereignty over the Hormuz Strait in response to the war launched against them. These same leaders stood silent and complicit and lifted no more than an eyebrow as hundreds of Iranian schoolchildren were killed, hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure destroyed, and leader after leader were assassinated.

Cowards, all of them, they at best offered whispered rebukes when Trump threatened the destruction of Iranian civilisation in a single night. But tax a barrel of oil and “Oh my god, this is intolerable!”

Iran has every right to insist on reparations but they will only come about if Iran succeeds in imposing its position on the belligerents. The Israelis and Americans are unlikely to face justice at the International Criminal Court (ICC) or International Court of Justice (ICJ), so reparations must be extracted from the other enabling states like the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and France. It is an elegant solution.

One thing the Iranians will hopefully recover soon is their stolen money. Experts estimate more than $100 billion remains blocked in foreign banks (including in the US, Qatar, South Korea, and Iraq).

We should remember that since 1979 the Western world has grievously damaged Iran’s economy via sanctions and the weaponisation of international trading systems, as well as blocking its integration within the community of nations.

A world historic moment is possible
If Iran succeeds in extracting reparations, it will be a world historic moment. It will be an achievement that will benefit countries around the globe which are similarly assailed by major powers. Nuclear powers like the US and Israel should respect the territorial integrity of non-nuclear states. They have done the opposite — and should face consequences.

For these reasons and more, I hope the Iranian government succeeds in its historic mission to preserve the territorial integrity of the sovereign state of Iran and that they can receive just compensation for the terrible crimes committed against them.

I will give the last word to Mohaddeseh Fallahat, a mother who spoke to the UN Human Rights Council this month about losing her daughter to a US airstrike at Minab at the very start of the US-Israeli war on Iran:

“As they walked out the door, they simply said, Mum, come pick us up after school. That simple sentence now repeats in my mind a thousand times. Each time my heart burns with pain. No mother ever thinks she will send her child off to school with a smile, only to be met with silence.”

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He is a contributor to Asia Pacific Report and hosts solidarity.co.nz

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

AMY GOODMAN: The US-Israeli war on Iran has entered its 11th day. Its impact is being increasingly felt across the globe. Al Jazeera is reporting residents of Tehran overnight experienced “some of the most intense bombardment” of the war.

At least 40 people were reportedly killed near the city’s Risalat Square.

In Lebanon, the death toll from Israel’s attacks are nearing 500. About 700,000 residents have been displaced.

Earlier today [March 10], Iran reportedly fired drones toward Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates, where a large fire broke out in an industrial area home to petrochemical plants. A suspected Iranian missile also hit a residential building in the capital of Bahrain, killing one person and injuring eight others.

On Monday, the Pentagon posted online a photo of a missile with the words “No Mercy” superimposed on it. An accompanying message read, “We have Only Just Begun to Fight.”

But soon after, Trump told CBS News, “I think the war is very complete, pretty ​much,” he said. Trump’s CBS interview led oil prices to drop and for global stocks to quickly rise.

But after the Wall Street markets closed, Trump told Republicans in Florida the US hasn’t “won enough.” At a news conference on Monday, ABC News reporter Selina Wang questioned Trump about the conflicting messages.

SELINA WANG: Mr. President, you’ve said the war is, quote, “very complete,” but your defense secretary says this is just the beginning. So, which is it? And how long should Americans be prepared for this war to last for?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I think you could say both. It’s the beginning. It’s the beginning of building a new country. But they certainly — they have no navy. They have no air force. They have no anti-aircraft equipment. It’s all been blown up.

“They have no radar. They have no telecommunications. And they have no leadership. It’s all gone.

“So, you know, you could look at that statement. We could — we could call it a tremendous success right now. As we leave here, I could call it, or we could go further.

“And we’re going to go further. But the big risk on that war has been over for three days. We wiped them out the first — in the first two days.

AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, President Trump said he had a good call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who reportedly proposed a, “quick political and diplomatic end to the Iranian conflict”.

We begin today’s show with retired Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell during the run-up and early years of the US war on Iraq. He’s taught national security affairs at both George Washington University and the College of William and Mary.

Colonel Wilkerson, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you respond to what has taken place over this last 11 days, starting with the diplomatic talks in Geneva between Iran and the United States? And as those talks were just wrapping up, US and Israel attacked Iran and killed the supreme leader there. Your response?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Yes, and, Amy, for the second time, we violated international law in that respect, and just common human decency. And your comments at the opening of the show were spot-on, but not nearly broad and deep enough.

I come from an administration of George W. Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney that committed war crimes, war crimes that Colin Powell and his lawyer Will Taft and I agonised over in trying to present some message to the American people about them. This administration has committed more war crimes in the last few days than I think any country since Adolf Hitler committed. And that is an incredible condemnation of this entire process.

We have bombed civilians relentlessly. We have bombed a school. We have bombed a hospital. We have struck facilities in the nature of Iran’s oil capacity that is now putting black poison all over 10-plus million people.

And we are essentially not bombing ballistic missile sites and bombing war materiel. We’re bombing people. We took a lesson from the IDF, if you will. We are bombing people, as, incidentally, they are still doing in Gaza and doing now in Lebanon.

These are all war crimes. And one wishes with fond hope that someday we might be called before the bar of justice and have to account for these war crimes. And what you just talked about is a crime also in the eyes of international relations and people who want to keep decent international relations ongoing in the world. We’re destroying that.

And on top of all of that — and this is the real serious problem here for America — Trump and Hegseth and Rubio and the other entourage of their national security complex have completely misjudged the nature of this war, as has, to a certain extent, Bibi Netanyahu.

This is a country as big as Western Europe, with 93 million people, probably 90 million of whom will fight us to the bitter death, who live in terrain that almost killed Alexander the Great. It is entirely inhospitable to military operations.

And Trump is talking about — actually talking about putting ground forces there. And the only way he will be able to claim any nature of victory is to do that. Only that will be the end of the empire’s presence in the Levant and the Middle East in general, because we will not be able to sustain that economically, physically.

We do not have the soldiers or Marines to do that. But that’s what he’s talking about. This is pure nonsense.

There was a column in Haaretz yesterday, and the title of the column, essentially, was “Trump will chicken out in this war, too.” I’m sorry, he’s not going to chicken out necessarily. That might be the tone and tint he puts to it. He’s going to be defeated, as are we.

“End of the Trump Presidency” – retired colonel slams war in Iran      Video: Democracy Now!

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Colonel, I wanted to ask you — we played that clip with Trump talking about all the damage that Iran has sustained, but there’s been very little acknowledgment by the US military or the White House to the enormous damage that has occurred to the US military footprint in the Middle East for decades. All of these bases and radar, multibillion-dollar radar, were established throughout the region. And what’s your understanding of the nature of the damage that has occurred to all of these bases, not just among the Gulf states, but also even in Iraq and other places of the Middle East?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Yeah, that damage is enormous. And I think what you’re witnessing right now is the initial steps of the empire, the American empire’s retreat from the Levant and the Middle East in general.

I don’t think we’re going to be able to sustain our presence there after what’s going to happen here, particularly if we stay at this for a long time and really do take significant casualties. We’re already taking more casualties than people know about, because the media is not being apprised of it.

Yes, we had the ceremony at Dover, but there are people getting ready at Landstuhl, our throughput hospital in Germany, right now to accept multiple casualties coming in. They’ve stopped their civilian service and so forth at that hospital. And other things are being geared up, too, like Walter Reed.

I don’t think they have even a modicum of appreciation of what kind of casualties are going to result, though, especially if we put ground forces into Iran. And that is the only way, unless he just lies completely about it, that Trump is going to be able to assert any kind of real force with regard to this population.

And to your point, in Bahrain, they have taken out billions of dollars’ worth of US radar and equipment, including the vertical missile loading cranes, so now ships have to go all the way to Diego Garcia to load these weapons.

They have essentially obliterated our capacity to carry out combat actions from a number of places in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Al Udeid is actually under under threat now, too.

And this is all part of the warp and woof of our ability to carry out combat operations in the region. I’m not even sure our biggest facility for passing on troops, throughput facility, that we used in both Iraq wars — is in Kuwait. I’m not even sure that that’s up now and able to do anything.

So, how would you even get Marines or soldiers, God forbid, into Iran? That’s a huge problem. They will sink the ships that are coming to deposit those troops wherever they’re coming.

We have not really damaged their ballistic missile capability. And the media blackout on Israel is keeping the American people from seeing the enormous degree of destruction to Israel, the latest component of which was a riposte to Israel’s having struck their oil facilities, on Haifa, their oil facility port.

And Haifa is being taken down much the way Eilat was taken down by the Houthis, the Allah Ansar, in the Red Sea, when we failed to be able to reopen the Red Sea. And that’s the next step.

The Bab al-Mandeb will be closed once the Houthis have gotten into action full time again. And 60 percent of the world’s commerce passes through the Red Sea. It’s not oil and gas exclusively. It’s all manner of things — foodstuffs, commodities and such.

So, this is a war with long legs. Trump has completely misinterpreted it. The only one who’s interpreted it correctly is Bibi Netanyahu, and I think he’s ready to use a nuclear weapon, should it become as bad as it looks like it might right now, because Iran has not even began to shoot its most sophisticated missiles.

And now the second and third class of those missiles is getting through almost without opposition. Imagine what these Mach 3, Mach 4 missiles, with huge warheads that have maybe a hundred different other warheads they display all across an area, are going to do to Israel once they’re fired.

They’re still there, and they’re still ready to fire.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Colonel, I wanted to actually — you mentioned the media coverage of what is going on in Israel. It has been amazing to me that all of the major US media are based in Israel, in Tel Aviv, yet we are seeing the least amount of coverage of what is going on within Israel.

I want to quote from a piece, an online piece, that CNN reporter Oren Liebermann posted earlier this week. And he wrote — and I’m quoting — “Every reporter in Israel — and every member of the public — is subject to a military censor. On national security grounds, the regulation authorises the censor to prohibit reporting or broadcasting any material that could reveal sensitive information or pose a threat to the country’s security interests.”

And he goes on to say, “This is particularly sensitive during wartime, where the military censor has made clear that broadcasting any images that reveal the location of interceptor missiles or military sites hit by enemy projectiles is forbidden, especially in live broadcasts.”

Now, they say this on their website, but they never mention this on air. And none of the networks are mentioning on air that they are strictly prohibited from showing any actual, real damage. I’m wondering your sense of the responsibility of the US media, especially since they’re always showing us the results of the plumes rising in Abu Dhabi or in Saudi Arabia or even in Iran, but not the direct hits that are occurring within Israel.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I’ll tell you what I told the senior editor to The Washington Post recently. I think it’s abominable, the lies that the American mainstream media, both video and print, is telling the American people. And they’re putting us in jeopardy in a real substantive sense, because the American people have no way of judging just how foolhardy, how stupid, how unwise, how violative of international dictum and rule this war is.

And when it gets to the point — I think this is the end of the Trump presidency, actually, because when it gets to the point where the pressure is so great and some of this has to come out and casualties are manifest, then the American people are going to ask really important questions: Why did you lie to us? Why did you tell us what you were telling us? Why did you start this war of choice?

Iran was no threat to the United States of America whatsoever. Did you go to war for Israel? We have heard you went to war for Israel. These are questions that are finally going to get out there in the hustings and going to have to be answered by someone, probably your local congressman, the supine body that has done nothing to check this president, particularly in the war power.

And we haven’t even talked about that.

This is a complete violation of the Constitution of the United States. Just as Kofi Annan said about the 2003 Iraq War, it’s an illegal war. And he went on to say it was a violation of our own Constitution. And he was absolutely right.

But this pales — or, that pales in comparison with what Trump is doing right now, and what he is going to probably have to do in order to seem to correct his errors.

And I’m truly worried that this destruction of Israel is going to reach a point — I listened to Netanyahu recently speaking in Hebrew to his clan, to his group — Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and others like that.

At the end of his remarks in Hebrew, which was translated for me very reliably, I think, he essentially said that if it went south, if it went bad, he was prepared to show the Iranians something they had never seen before.

I think he meant a nuclear weapon. And I go back to 1973 when Golda Meir told a BBC reporter — you can check, it was printed in London the next day on the front page — that she would use a nuclear weapon, in response to his question, “Would you use a nuclear weapon?”

Because at that time, they were pretty hard-pressed in the 1973 war. And she said, “Yes,” without equivocation. I think we’re back at that point again, and for probably a far more dangerous situation.

AMY GOODMAN: I know you have to go, Colonel Wilkerson, but I just want to point out you were the former chief of staff of Secretary of State Colin Powell, who dragged his feet on supporting the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, but ultimately gave that speech, that he would call a stain on his career, at the UN.

It was critical for Bush, President Bush, that it was Colin Powell who gave this speech, because he was seen as the reluctant warrior. And he gave that speech saying there was evidence of Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction. Can you make a parallel to what we’re seeing today?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I can, but I think this is far greater a travesty and a tragedy. That was bad enough. And torture was the thing that broke my back, and ultimately it sort of broke Colin Powell’s back, too, because we realised that we had signed up not only to a war that was not necessary, we had signed up to a president of the United States for the first time in the nation’s history making public policy torture.

Other human beings being tortured was made presidential public policy. This is far worse, I think, and it’s been building for some time. It’s been building all since Trump was elected, and actually since his first administration. And I think it makes what we did — not to discount it, but it makes it pale by comparison, and it makes me deeply concerned about the future of this republic.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much for being with us, Lawrence Wilkerson, retired Army colonel, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005.

Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by democracynow.org on 10 March 2026.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz