On June 22, 2025, the world witnessed a dangerous rupture in the foundations of international order. In a joint military operation, the United States and Israel launched precision strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. There was no Security Council mandate, no Congressional authorization, and no clear evidence of an imminent threat. Far from being an act of self-defense, the strike represented a deliberate bypass of international norms. It signaled not only a violation of law, but the erosion of the very principles that once claimed to uphold global stability.

What unfolded was not a breakdown of a fair and universal system, but the reactivation of a much older structure of dominance—one that international law itself helped construct. Antony Anghie in Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (2005) argued that the international legal order was never neutral. It emerged from imperial encounters, designed to define who was sovereign and who was subject to intervention. Today, that architecture lives on—not through formal colonialism, but through legal double standards, strategic violence, and the disciplined exclusion of those deemed unworthy of equal standing.

To understand the gravity of this moment, we must return to June 13, when Israel launched a sudden assault on Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure. Iran did not retaliate blindly. It acted with restraint, kept diplomatic channels open, and signaled its willingness to de-escalate. Washington, however, chose escalation over mediation. Rather than acting as an intermediary, the United States became an active participant. And once again, as has so often been the case, the world demanded restraint not from the aggressor, but from the state under attack. This inversion of responsibility is not simply moral failure it is legal architecture functioning exactly as designed.

The strike violated fundamental principles of the UN Charter. Article 2(4) prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity of any state, while Article 51 allows self-defense only in response to an actual armed attack. Iran, as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), had permitted regular IAEA inspections. There were no reported violations. The sites targeted were legal, civilian, and under international oversight. Iran followed the rules and was punished for doing so. This is not an accident, but a recurring feature in which the law functions by excluding and protects only by selectively withdrawing that protection.

What happens when the law no longer constrains power, but legitimates it? We are witnessing not merely the collapse of legal norms, but the normalization of impunity. Western governments (Britain, France, Germany, the European Union) offered political cover for the strike, framing it as “understandable” while avoiding any legal justification. They endorsed the right of one state to use force, while remaining silent on another’s right to exist in peace. In doing so, they reaffirmed an order where legality is not a standard applied equally, but a language controlled by the powerful.

This moment reveals the deeper structure of global inequality. The attack on Iran was not an isolated episode, but a manifestation of a broader pattern in which Global South states are portrayed as irrational, volatile, or dangerous. These depictions justify their “management” by external actors through sanctions, monitoring regimes, and, when necessary, military intervention. Sovereignty in the South remains conditional. It is granted, not assumed. It is supervised, not respected.

Yet Iran’s conduct during this crisis undermines that narrative. It exercised legal restraint, followed international procedures, and sought dialogue. In a fair system, this would have earned protection. In the existing one, it invited destruction. The threat Iran poares is not military, it is conceptual. It represents the possibility that a Southern state might assert its sovereignty without subservience. The real target of the airstrikes was not infrastructure, but that possibility.

In response, twenty-three countries from the Global South, including Indonesia, China, Türkiye, and Brazil issued formal condemnations. But without coordination or collective leverage, those statements rang hollow. There was no joint strategy, no diplomatic escalation, no structural challenge to the system that enabled the violence. The Global South remains trapped in a paradox where its moral clarity is unmatched by institutional power.

This paralysis points to something deeper—the strategic retreat of leadership in the South. Out of fear—of economic retaliation, diplomatic isolation, or domestic instability—many states default to symbolic diplomacy. They trade moral clarity for political safety, choosing statements over strategy. When solidarity is reduced to rhetoric, the result is not autonomy but a new form of dependency—one rooted not in territorial occupation, but in narrative subordination, legal asymmetry, and structural exclusion.

The liberal international order, once praised as a system of fairness and restraint, now appears transparently selective. Vetoes shield aggressors. Multilateral institutions are bypassed. Legal frameworks are weaponized or ignored. What remains is not order—it is imbalance, institutionalized and enforced. The world is not moving toward crisis. It already lives inside one.

The question before us is no longer how to restore this system, but whether it deserves restoration at all. A legal order that binds only the weak is not sustainable. A peace imposed through coercion is no peace at all. The responsibility to chart an alternative falls to the Global South. Capitals like Jakarta, Pretoria, Brasília, and Ankara must move beyond reactive condemnation and begin articulating structural alternatives—not slogans, but blueprints. Not rhetorical dissent, but institutional design.

Iran today is more than a target. It is a mirror. Its experience forces us to ask whether sovereignty, legality, and restraint still carry weight in international affairs—or whether they are now liabilities for those outside the circle of power. Defending Iran’s legal rights does not mean endorsing its government. It means affirming a principle that no state should be punished for following the law. If legality is reserved for the powerful and peace is dictated by bombs, then both words have lost their meaning.

The United States and its allies have, through repetition and impunity, eroded the legitimacy of the very laws they claim to uphold. The task now is not just critique, but reconstruction. The Global South must not simply ask for inclusion—it must claim the authority to reimagine the order itself. Only then can law serve justice, and justice means more than the will of the strong.