An Oblong Media Geopolitical Exposé.
International law did not suddenly collapse. It was quietly abandoned.
For decades, Western powers lectured the world about the sanctity of the United Nations Charter, sovereignty, and the prohibition of aggression. Governments in Washington, London, Paris, Ottawa, Berlin and Canberra repeatedly insisted that the global order depended on respect for these principles. Nations that violated them were branded rogue states and punished with sanctions, isolation, or war.
Yet when the United States and Israel launched their assault on Iran in late February, that same rulebook was suddenly treated as optional.
The silence was deafening.
Only days earlier, many of these same governments had condemned Russia for violating Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which explicitly prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity of another state. They framed that violation as an existential threat to the so called rules based international order.
But when bombs began falling on Iranian soil, the outrage vanished.
Instead of condemnation, Western capitals rushed to produce statements that sounded less like diplomacy and more like legal gymnastics. The attack was reframed as necessary, preventive, even responsible. Iran was accused of threatening peace, destabilising its region, and pursuing nuclear capabilities. Therefore, the logic went, striking it was not aggression but protection.
The transformation was breathtaking.
Countries that had spent years presenting themselves as guardians of international law now appeared eager to reinterpret those very laws to accommodate Washington’s geopolitical priorities. Canada quickly signalled support for American action against Tehran. Australia declared that while it had not participated in the strikes, it supported measures to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The distinction was almost comical, not pulling the trigger but applauding the shot.
Britain went further.
London unveiled a legal rationale claiming that future strikes against Iranian targets could be justified as collective self defence on behalf of regional allies hosting Western forces. In other words, Iran defending itself after being attacked could itself become the legal basis for further attacks on Iran.
If such reasoning were applied universally, any country could justify attacking another simply by claiming a future threat.
The precedent is dangerous.
History shows how such narratives are constructed. Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the world was told that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction capable of threatening global security. Those weapons were never found. The war that followed destroyed a state, destabilised a region, and unleashed extremist groups that would haunt the Middle East for decades.
The same pattern appeared in Libya in 2011.
What began as a NATO operation supposedly designed to protect civilians from Muammar Gaddafi’s security forces quickly evolved into an air campaign that assisted rebel militias and culminated in the violent overthrow and killing of Libya’s leader. The aftermath was catastrophic. Libya collapsed into factional warfare, extremist groups proliferated, and the country remains fractured more than a decade later.
These precedents raise an uncomfortable question.
If the objective is truly stability and democracy, why do interventions so often leave behind chaos?
Iran itself has long been shaped by foreign interference. The 1953 coup orchestrated by Western intelligence services to overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, after he nationalised Iran’s oil industry, remains one of the most consequential covert operations in modern history. It replaced an elected government with monarchical rule that eventually collapsed into the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
That historical memory still informs Iran’s worldview.
For many Iranians, foreign powers invoking democracy and human rights while bombing their country feels less like liberation and more like a familiar script.
Even among Western allies, the response to the latest escalation revealed a deeper reality. Governments that depend heavily on American security guarantees, intelligence cooperation, and trade access are reluctant to challenge Washington publicly. The cost of dissent can include diplomatic isolation, tariffs, sanctions, or exclusion from strategic alliances.
The result is a kind of geopolitical conformity.
Public criticism becomes rare. Legal concerns are quietly set aside. The alliance system closes ranks, even when the actions in question undermine the very principles those alliances claim to defend.
Meanwhile, the human consequences ripple far beyond diplomatic statements.
Across several Muslim majority countries, protests erupted after reports of assassinations of Iranian leaders and senior officials. Demonstrations quickly turned violent in some places, with security forces clashing with crowds and casualties reported. Yet these deaths barely registered in Western political discourse.
The victims, it seems, belonged to the wrong narrative.
If history offers any guidance, military strikes rarely produce the neat outcomes promised by their architects. Removing governments, assassinating leaders, or bombing infrastructure can unleash forces that are impossible to control. Power vacuums emerge. Radical groups flourish. Regional rivalries intensify.
What begins as a surgical strike often becomes a long and unpredictable crisis.
Yet such lessons appear strangely absent from contemporary strategic thinking.
The deeper issue is not merely the attack on Iran. It is the erosion of the rules that once governed international behaviour. When powerful states selectively interpret those rules depending on who their allies and adversaries are, the global order becomes less a system of law and more a contest of power.
In that environment, the message to the world is unmistakable.
International law applies to the weak.
The strong write exceptions.
And in the increasingly lawless landscape of global geopolitics, the jungle has returned, not in the developing world as once imagined, but at the very centre of the system that claimed to civilise it.
Duruebube Uzii na Abosi
Hon. Chima Nnadi-Oforgu
OBLONG MEDIA UNLIMITED 
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