درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The extensive aerial operation and armed attack by Israel against Iran on the 23rd Khordad 1404 [corresponding to June 13, 2025] may be characterized as a violation of the fundamental principle prohibiting the use of force, constituting an act and crime of aggression. Beyond other legal dimensions of the act of aggression, the purpose of this article is to examine the complex issue of the possible jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the alleged committed crime, as well as the jurisdictional challenges facing this institution. While Iran's legal system lacks an appropriate normative and structural mechanism for applying complementarity jurisdiction concerning core international crimes, including the crime of aggression, the non-membership of both Iran and Israel in the ICC, the lack of willingness by Security Council (SC) to refer the situation to the ICC, and normative deficiencies regarding the acceptance of ad hoc declaration ( per article 12(3) of the Rome Statute) by Iran, render the ICC's exercise of jurisdiction difficult and even impossible. A question can be raised in this regard, does the ICC possess jurisdiction, pursuant to the principle of complementarity, to adjudicate upon the act of aggression committed by Israel against Iran? This article, after recounting the events, descriptively and analytically examines the possibility of the ICC exercising jurisdiction in light of trigger mechanism. Ultimately, it demonstrates that the ICC's jurisdiction is confronted with numerous and particular challenges, thus rendering it unable to exercise jurisdiction; an issue that both highlights the necessity of criminalizing core international crimes within domestic law of Iran, and indicates the fundamental reforms to the ICC's Statute, particularly concerning the role of the SC in activating the ICC's jurisdiction.

This article critically evaluates the legality of pre-emptive self-defence under contemporary international law, focusing specifically on Israel’s June 2025 airstrikes against Iran. By analyzing the legal framework established by Articles 2(4) and 51 of the UN Charter, the central argument contends that pre-emptive force remains unlawful absent an actual armed attack. However, an incremental accumulation of scholarships and national military manuals, primarily limited to certain western States, has fostered a self-referential cycle. This cycle projects the misleading appearance of an emerging customary norm authorizing pre-emptive or preventive use of force. This doctrinal ‘snowball effect’, whereby successive publications uncritically cite and amplify predecessors, generates an artificial sense of legal evolution. Nevertheless, rigorous analysis drawing on doctrine, International Court of Justice jurisprudence, general practice of States and even the Caroline criteria itself, often invoked by States justifying pre-emptive self-defence, reveals a clear distinction: lawful self-defence is strictly confined by necessity and proportionality, while anticipatory or preventive self-defence falls outside accepted legal boundaries. The article concludes that Israel’s justification, based on non-imminent and speculative threats, fails to meet even the lower threshold of the Caroline doctrine for pre-emptory self-defence – let alone the stricter contemporary jus ad bellum standards under the UN Charter. Recognizing a unilateral right to pre-emption would gravely undermine the jus cogens character of Article 2(4), erode the UN’s collective security system, and incentivize destabilizing unilateral initiatives and resorts to force. Consequently, absent Security Council authorization or a manifest armed attack, pre-emptive self-defence remains fundamentally incompatible with the current international legal order.

One of the most significant issues concerning territory in both international and domestic law is the question of islands. Islands, whether as subnational political units or as extensions of the mainland, give rise to various legal complexities. Among these, the issue of sovereignty over islands linked to the mainland remains a crucial topic in international law and politics. In recent years, some of the most notable territorial disputes have centered on sovereignty over islands between different States. A prominent example is the long-standing dispute between Iran and the United Arab Emirates over the three islands of Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, and Lesser Tunb, which, although rooted in the past, has entered a complex form between the two States since the early 1980s. This article aims to review one of the most reliable and authoritative books on Iran’s sovereignty over these islands in the Persian Gulf, titled Historical, Political, and Legal Foundations of Iran’s Sovereignty over the Islands of Tunb and Abu Musa, authored by the late Davoud Hermidas Bavand (1934–2023). Bavand was a distinguished Iranian diplomat and an expert in foreign policy and international law. The book was first published in English in 1994, followed by the first Persian translation by Bahman Aghaei, published by Ganj-e-Danesh Library Publishing in 1998. The following review is based on the first edition of the book.