Ellie Chowns, Green Party MP for North Herefordshire. CC image Wikipedia.
Responding to recent international developments in the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, Dr Ellie Chowns, leader of the Parliamentary Green Party, said:
“Just weeks ago we saw Trump and Netanyahu launch illegal strikes against Iran in the midst of ongoing negotiations, endangering countless civilian lives and dragging the entire surrounding region into chaos. Despite the clear human cost of this flagrant breach of international law, the UK Government did not condemn the initial attacks made by the US and Israel. On the contrary, Keir Starmer has continued to stress Britian’s allyship with these two nations – and in allowing the US to use UK military bases for ‘defensive’ action, has risked dragging the UK further into an illegal war.
“The US and Israel have continuously flouted international law with apparent impunity. Whether concerning Israel’s genocide in Gaza and illegal settlement expansion in the West Bank or the US’s unilateral attacks on Venezuela in the name of oil imperialism, the UK Government has refused to pursue appropriate action against these nations for breaching international law or to re-evaluate their status as allies to Britain.
“This permissiveness has not tempered the two countries. Following the strikes on Iran, Israel has expanded their ground campaign in Lebanon, displacing a million people throughout the country and seemingly preparing for prolonged occupation of southern Lebanon. Trump has intensified his threats against Cuba following the collapse of the island nation’s energy grid under a US-imposed oil blockade, declaring just yesterday that he believes he will ‘take’ the country and ‘could do anything [he] want[s] with it.’
“This cannot continue. The Green Party calls on the UK Government to make clear to Trump and Netanyahu the UK will not accept breaches of international law, to withdraw permission for the US to use UK military bases, and to refuse any further complicity in this illegal war. Furthermore, we reiterate our calls for the UK to halt all arms sales to and military cooperation with the Israeli Government, to drive independent investigations into war crimes committed and support justice mechanisms for victims, and to impose sanctions on government officials responsible for breaches of international law.”
Keir Starmer explains that UK is participating defensively in Trump and Israel’s criminal war for Israel’s genocidal expansion in Iran and states that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Starmer said it here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks at a town hall event on February 20, 2026 in Stanford, California. (Photo by Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images)
As evidence of US war crimes mounts, critics around the world argue that “Trump and Hegseth should be sent straight to The Hague to face prosecution.”
As President Donald Trump on Tuesday made what one critic called “the most blasé admission of a war crime by a US president in history,” claiming the Navy sunk an Iranian ship and killed over 100 sailors because it was “more fun” than capturing both, Sen. Bernie Sanders tore into him and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over their illegal war on Iran.
“The attacks on Iran by the United States and Israel are unraveling international law, the Geneva Conventions, and the legitimacy of the United Nations. This is extremely dangerous for the future of the planet and humanity,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement.
While both the Republican-controlled Senate and House of Representatives have refused to pass a war powers resolution to stop the assault, experts worldwide have argued the assault violates the US Constitution, which gives Congress the authority to declare war, and UN Charter, which prohibits the use of force against another state unless it is a “necessary and proportionate” act of self-defense or is authorized by the Security Council.
“If the United States and Israel have the right to launch a unilateral attack against Iran, what is the moral or legal argument against China invading Taiwan, Russia attacking Poland, or North Korea launching missiles into South Korea? There is none,” warned Sanders, who has supported war powers resolutions on Iran, Venezuela, and the president’s boat bombing campaign. “In Trump’s world, any nation has the ‘right’ to go to war against any other nation for any reason.”
“After the horrors of World War II, the international community came together to establish international law—a system of rules designed to prevent aggressive wars and hold nations accountable for violating basic human rights,” said the senator, whose father lost relatives in the Holocaust. “Trump and Netanyahu are destroying that effort and are pushing the global community back into international anarchy—a world that produced 10 million dead in World War I and 50 million dead in World War II.”
Sanders argued that “we cannot go back to a world where might makes right—where any nation can invade, bomb, or destabilize another country for any reason they choose. That mentality leaves all of us, and future generations, increasingly unsafe.”
In addition to opposing Trump’s violence at home and abroad, the senator has railed against US complicity in Netanyahu’s genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip, where the death toll continues to rise despite an October ceasefire deal. He even forced multiple unsuccessful Senate votes to cut off some US weapons to Israel over the bloodshed in the Palestinian territory.
Netanyahu not only bombed and starved the Palestinians of Gaza after the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on Israel, he also bombarded Lebanon, claiming to target Hezbollah. While a ceasefire agreement to protect the Lebanese people was reached in November 2024, Israel has returned to attacking the country since launching the assault on Iran last month.
More than 1,300 Iranians are now dead, including multiple political leaders as well as around 175 people, mostly children, killed in what increasingly appears to have been a US strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that Tuesday would “be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran.”
Meanwhile, Jostein Hauge, an assistant professor at the UK’s University of Cambridge, noted on social media Tuesday that “the Minab school massacre in Iran—carried out by the US government—is one of the deadliest school massacres in modern history.”
He put the US president and Pentagon chief in a class with not only Netanyahu but also former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who are all wanted by the Hague-based International Criminal Court.
“Trump and Hegseth should be sent straight to The Hague to face prosecution for war crimes, alongside Netanyahu, Gallant, Putin, and al-Bashir,” Hauge said.
While the American public is already enduring some economic fallout of Trump’s war on Iran, at least seven US troops have paid with their lives. Eight more “remain listed as severely injured,” according to chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell. “Since the start of Operation Epic Fury, approximately 140 US service members have been wounded over 10 days of sustained attacks.”
Democratic Sens. Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), Cory Booker (NJ), Tammy Duckworth (Ill.), Tim Kaine (Va.), Chris Murphy (Conn.), and Adam Schiff (Calif.)—with whom Sanders caucuses—have launched a renewed effort to force new votes on war powers resolutions if Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) refuses to hold committee hearings on Iran.
“Now is the time for Democrats to use all the leverage we have to try to stop this unnecessary war,” they said Monday in a joint statement to Semafor. The senators added that Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio “must immediately come before Congress for a public hearing and explain why we’re in this war, how it will end, and why they are prioritizing billions of dollars on an open-ended war instead of lowering costs for American families.”
Keir Starmer explains that UK is participating defensively in Trump and Israel’s criminal war for Israel’s genocidal expansion in Iran and states that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Starmer said it here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Donald Trump explains why he established his Bored of PeaceOrcas discuss rotting brain. Front Orca says “Wish someone would lock him up”.
Former Labour Party leader co-founder and leader, Jeremy Corbyn, takes part in the protest against the war with Iran in Parliament Square, as the USA and Israel launch attacks on Iran. Photo by Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
“Blair dragged the UK into an illegal war that triggered a spiral of hatred, conflict, and misery,” Corbyn said. “Twenty-three years later, another Labour prime minister is doing his best to follow in Blair’s footsteps.”
As UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer allows British bases to be used as part of the US-Israeli war against Iran, the former leader of his Labour Party says he’s making the same mistake that another Labour PM made 23 years ago.
Jeremy Corbyn, the socialist member of Parliament who led Labour from 2015 to 2020, said on Tuesday that Starmer was “echoing Tony Blair’s obedience to Washington”, referring to the then-prime minister’s decision in 2003 to join US President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq.
“Ignoring the wisdom of ordinary people who could see the catastrophe ahead, Blair dragged the UK into an illegal war that triggered a spiral of hatred, conflict, and misery. More than a million Iraqi men, women, and children paid the price.” Corbyn wrote in a Tuesday piece for the democratic socialist publication Tribune.
Infamously pledging to Bush, “I will be with you, whatever,” Blair helped to promote the false claims that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. And despite a lack of support from the United Nations, he joined Bush’s “coalition of the willing,” committing 46,000 British troops to the war.
“This was the last time a Labour prime minister blindly backed the wishes of the US and its warmongering president,” Corbyn said. “Twenty-three years later, another Labour prime minister is doing his best to follow in Blair’s footsteps and drag us into a catastrophic, illegal war.”
Unlike Bush, US President Donald Trump has not yet put boots on the ground in Iran, instead waging a destructive campaign of aerial bombings and missile strikes that have taken out the nation’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other senior Iranian officials.
As of Monday, the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), a US-based monitor of human rights in Iran, reported that at least 742 civilians had been killed since Saturday by US and Israeli attacks, with nearly 1,000 injured and more than 600 deaths still under review.
While Starmer has stressed that the UK “had no role” in launching the war, he has lent credence to the questionable case the US and Israel have made to justify it, including emphasizing that Iran “must never have nuclear weapons.”
Iran has always contended its nuclear program was not for military purposes, and it had no desire to produce a nuclear weapon. Prior to Saturday’s strikes, reports indicated that Iranian negotiators had offered to give up the nation’s entire stockpile of enriched uranium.
And though he has accused Iran of launching “indiscriminate strikes” across the Gulf, Starmer has been reticent to criticize similar actions by the US and Israel, which have had vastly larger death tolls, including the bombing of a girls’ school that reportedly killed 165 people, most of them girls between ages 7 and 12, and attacks on several hospitals.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer says that “Britain will not” join forces with strikes on Iran carried out by the US and Israel.
The UK is allowing American forces to use its bases in the region to help launch attacks, but stresses the UK military will only act defensively. pic.twitter.com/8fqPOxPLMp
One day after the first strikes were conducted, and following mounting pressure from Trump, Starmer announced that he’d given the US approval for “specific, limited defensive” use of three Royal Air Force (RAF) bases—Fairford in England, Akrotiri in Cyprus, and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean—in order to destroy Iran’s missiles “at source” after a drone hit Akrotiri, causing minimal damage.
However, Starmer continued to claim that the UK had learned the “mistakes of Iraq,” and “will not join offensive action now.”
Corbyn said that Starmer’s insistence that bases would only be used “defensively” was merely “meaningless vocabulary that reveals Starmer’s contempt for the intelligence of the British people.”
In Parliament on Monday, Starmer said that “the use of the bases is to allow the US to use its ability to take out the ability of Iran to launch the attacks in the first place.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday used similar reasoning to justify launching the war, explaining that Iran was likely to retaliate against a planned Israeli attack and that it therefore posed an “imminent threat” to US personnel even though that threat was contingent on Israel attacking first.
Corbyn described the idea of a “preemptive strike” as a contradiction in terms. “Under this convoluted reasoning,” he said, “almost any attack on anybody can be classified as a defensive measure. Starmer’s words are Newspeak—and cannot shield his government from complicity in the devastation ahead.”
Mark my words: Starmer’s decision to drag Britain into another illegal war will prove to be a catastrophic, historic mistake. pic.twitter.com/2iSFpnDHdw
Like in the United States, the British public has expressed low support for American and Israeli actions against Iran. According to a YouGov poll published on Monday, 49% disapprove of US military action, compared to 28% who support it. Fewer than 1 in 5 Labour voters said they supported it.
Voters also said they oppose their government’s involvement. Compared with just 32% of Brits who said they supported letting the US use British bases, 50% said they opposed it.
“For too long, Britain has blindly followed the US as it indulges in disastrous imperial fantasies,” Corbyn said, noting the UK’s continued support for Israel over two years of US-sponsored genocide in Gaza.
Corbyn is now an independent MP who co-founded a new political party after being thrown out of Labour in 2020 over dubious accusations of antisemitism, which he has alleged stem from his strong criticism of Israel.
“It’s time to forge a different path. Now is not the time to try to rescue a ‘special relationship’ characterised by impunity, genocide, and war,” he said. “Now is the time to forge an independent foreign policy based on international law and peace.”
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Donald Trump explains why he established his Bored of PeaceOrcas discuss rotting brain. Front Orca says “Wish someone would lock him up”.
A man holds a children’s backpack as rescue workers and residents search through the rubble of a girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran, on February 28. Mehr News Agency/AP
As the US and Israel began their joint assault on Iran, reports emerged from Iran that a strike hit the Shajarah Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in the southern city of Minab.
The school was reportedly packed with young pupils at the time. Iranian authorities say more than 150 people were killed, including children, and 60 more injured (these figures are yet to be independently verified).
Videos verified by international media show rescue workers digging through collapsed concrete, school bags being pulled from the debris, and scorch marks along the remaining walls.
The New York Times says it has verified videos that show the school next to a naval base belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, or IRGC, and a strike hitting that base.
Neither the United States nor Israel have publicly confirmed hitting the school. The US military’s Central Command (Centcom) said:
We are aware of reports concerning civilian harm resulting from ongoing military operations. We take these reports seriously and are looking into them. The protection of civilians is of utmost importance, and we will continue to take all precautions available to minimize the risk of unintended harm.
At present, we do not have enough verified facts to reach a firm legal conclusion about what happened.
But given the questions about the legality of the US and Israeli strikes on Iran – and deeper questions about whether we’re witnessing the “death of international law” more broadly – incidents like this illustrate the continuing importance of the law, especially in times of conflict.
Which targets are protected under the law?
In armed conflict, international humanitarian law applies. International humanitarian law is built on foundational principles that must inform all decisions by armed forces concerning what they target:
This protection is not absolute, however. Any civilian object (including schools) can lose their protected status if they become military objectives. A school used as a military base, artillery position or command post could meet that definition.
So far, we have no evidence the school in Minab was being used for military purposes or that it was intentionally targeted.
Proportionality and precautions in attacks
What, then, if the school was not intentionally targeted, but was incidental collateral damage from an attack directed at the IRGC barracks nearby?
International humanitarian law recognises civilian objects may be affected by attacks on military objectives.
Incidental harm to civilians and civilian objects is only lawful if it satisfies the test of proportionality and military necessity under the law. All feasible precautions must also have been taken to minimise harm to civilians.
So, if a school near a military target is hit, the legality of that strike turns on whether the expected harm to children and the school was excessive compared to the military advantage gained by striking the target.
Also important: did the military commanders take all feasible precautions to assess the effect of the attack on nearby civilians or civilian infrastructure? This includes the specific weapons that are used and the timing of the attack.
The destroyed building is a primary school for girls in the south of Iran. It was bombed in broad daylight, when packed with young pupils.
Dozens of innocent children have been murdered at this site alone.
In recent years, we have witnessed a number of countries and their leaders openly flouting international law and the rules-based order. Yet, it would be a profound mistake to conclude that international law has ceased to matter. Even grave breaches do not negate the system itself.
As renowned American international law scholar Louis Henkin famously wrote in 1979:
Almost all nations observe almost all principles of international law and almost all of their obligations almost all of the time.
Henkin’s point was not naïve optimism. Daily compliance of international law remains the norm in diplomacy, trade, aviation, maritime navigation, treaty compliance and peaceful dispute settlement.
Violations do occur – sometimes brazenly – but they are exceptions to an overwhelmingly compliant pattern of behaviour.
The fact that some states breach foundational rules such as the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter does not render international law illusory.
Rather, it underscores the importance of naming breaches for what they are and defending the legal order that most states, most of the time, continue to respect.
If the strike on the Minab school is ultimately shown to have violated the principles of distinction, proportionality and military necessity, it would not prove Henkin wrong; it would prove his point.
International law matters precisely because departures from it can be identified, judged and condemned.
The rubble of a girls’ school is not evidence that the law is meaningless; it is a stark reminder of why the law exists, and why insisting on compliance remains essential.
Orcas discuss rotting brain. Front Orca says “Wish someone would lock him up”.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
A protestor holds up a sign as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifies during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing about US policy toward Venezuela on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on January 28, 2026. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
“Rubio’s dangerously expansive vision to transform the United States into a colonizing power in the Americas must be challenged,” one watchdog leader said of the US secretary of state.
In addition to asserting that “there is no war against Venezuela,” despite US forces killing scores of people there while abducting its president earlier this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday laid out for a Senate panel how the Trump administration intends to continue controlling the South American nation’s oil and related profits.
Legal experts have argued that US President Donald Trump’s blockade of Venezuela’s oil, abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores—who have both pleaded not guilty to federal narco-terrorism charges—and bombings of boats allegedly smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean all violate international law.
“The ongoing military actions in the Caribbean and South America, including the abduction of Venezuela’s president, are wrong, illegal under US and international law, and unconstitutional,” Robert Weissman, co-president of the group Public Citizen, said before the Senate hearing. “Congressional Republicans have blocked war powers resolutions that would end the US aggression in Venezuela, an extremely dangerous abdication of congressional responsibility to check presidential unlawfulness.”
“Marco Rubio’s central role in the planning and execution of the scheme to violate the sovereignty of Venezuela and steal the country’s oil merits a deep investigation by Congress, and potentially the removal of Rubio as secretary of state,” Weissman continued. “Rubio’s dangerously expansive vision to transform the United States into a colonizing power in the Americas must be challenged.”
Testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—on which he previously served—Rubio said that “Maduro is an indicted drug trafficker, not a legal head of state,” described his abduction as “an operation to aid law enforcement,” and declared that “the United States is prepared to help oversee Venezuela’s transition from a criminal state to a responsible partner.”
Rubio, the acting national security adviser, insisted that Trump wasn’t planning for any more military action in Venezuela—but also would not rule out such action, potentially without congressional authorization, in “self-defense” against an “imminent” threat.
Trump has repeatedly made clear through public statements that his Venezuela policy is focused on its petroleum reserves, seemingly to enrich the fossil fuel leaders who helped him return to power. American forces have seized several tankers in the Caribbean Sea linked to the country—which critics have condemned as “piracy”—and the first US sale of Venezuelan oil went to the company of a trader who donated millions to the president’s 2024 campaign, which Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) last week called “yet another example of his unchecked corruption.”
Describing US control of Venezuela’s nationalized petroleum industry, Rubio told the committee:
Objective number one was stability… And one of the tools that’s available to us is the fact that we have sanctions on oil. There is oil that is sanctioned that cannot move from Venezuela because of our quarantine. And so what we did is we entered into an arrangement with them, and the arrangement is this: On the oil that is sanctioned and quarantined, we will allow you to move it to market. We will allow you to move it to market at market prices—not at the discount China was getting. In return, the funds from that will be deposited into an account that we will have oversight over, and you will spend that money for the benefit of the Venezuelan people…
This is not going to be the permanent mechanism, but this is a short-term mechanism in which the needs of the Venezuelan people can be met through a process that we’ve created, where they will submit every month a budget of this is what we need funded. We will provide for them at the front end what that money cannot be used for. And they have been very cooperative in this regard. In fact, they have pledged to use a substantial amount of those funds to purchase medicine and equipment directly from the United States.
In an exchange with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Rubio said that an “audit process” has not yet been set up but will be, adding that “we’ve only made one payment” and it “retrospectively will be audited, but it was important we made that payment because they had to meet payroll. They had to keep sanitation workers, police officers, government workers on staff.”
Shaheen noted that the oil reportedly sold for $500 million, but only $300 million went to Venezuela’s government, now led by Maduro’s former deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, and asked Rubio about the remaining $200 million. The secretary said that the rest of the money was in a temporary account in Qatar that will ultimately become a US Treasury blocked account.
Summarizing the Trump administration’s plans, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said: “I think the scope of the project that you are undertaking in Venezuela is without precedent. You are taking their oil at gunpoint; you are holding and selling that oil; putting, for now, the receipts in an offshore Middle Eastern account; you’re deciding how and for what purposes that money is gonna be used in a country of 30 million people. I think a lot of us believe that that is destined for failure.”
Highlighting that “a month later, we have no information on a timetable for a democratic transition, Maduro’s people are still in charge, most of the political prisoners are in jail—and by the way, those that have been let out have a gag order on them from the government—the opposition leader is still in exile,” Murphy added, “this looks, already, like it is a failure.”
At one point during the nearly three-hour hearing, Leonardo Flores, a Venezuelan-American with the anti-war group CodePink, shouted, “Marco Rubio, you and Trump are thugs!”
US Capitol Police removed Flores from the hearing. As he was being led away, the protester said that “sanctions are a form of collective punishment of Venezuelan citizens. That’s a war crime. Hands off Venezuela! Hands off Cuba!”
Asked by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) on Wednesday, “Will you make a public commitment today to rule out US regime change in Cuba,” Rubio—the son of Cuban immigrants—replied: “Regime change? Oh no, I think we would like to see the regime there change. That doesn’t mean that we’re gonna to make a change, but we would love to see a change. There’s no doubt about the fact that it would be of great benefit to the United States if Cuba was no longer governed by an autocratic regime.”
Since the abduction operation, there have been “free Maduro” protests in both Venezuela and Cuba, which lost 32 citizens in the Trump administration’s attack on Caracas. Speaking to thousands of people gathered outside the US Embassy in Havana earlier this month, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said that “the current US administration has opened the door to an era of barbarism, plunder, and neo-fascism.”
“No one here surrenders,” he continued, taking aim at not only Trump but also Rubio. “The current emperor of the White House and his infamous secretary of state haven’t stopped threatening me.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
