Jeffrey D. Sachs, Sybil FaresThe US-Israeli attack on Iran is also an assault on the United Nations
March 3, 2026
The US–Israel war on Iran is a direct breach of the UN Charter and a blow to international law. But the attempt to impose global hegemony and hollow out the UN will ultimately fail in a multipolar world determined to resist domination.
On 16 February, 2026, one of us (Jeffrey Sachs) sent a lett er to the UN Security Council warning that the United States was on the verge of tearing up the United Nations Charter. That warning has now come to pass. The United States and Israel have launched an unprovoked war against Iran in flagrant violation of Article 2(4) of the Charter, without authorisation from the Security Council, and without any legitimate claim of self-defence under Article 51. They are trying to kill the UN Charter and the international rule of law, but they will fail.
At the Security Council on 28 February, 2026, the US and its allies directed their condemnation not at the American and Israeli aggression, but at Iran. One US ally after the next condemned Iran for its retaliatory attacks yet absurdly failed to condemn the illegal and unprovoked US-Israeli attack on Iran. This performance by these countries was disgraceful and turned reality completely upside down.
The joint US-Israeli attacks were described by Trump as necessary because Iran “rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore.” This is of course a flat lie. As the letter of 16 February recounted, Iran agreed a decade ago to a nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that was adopted by the UN Security Council in Resolution 2231. It was Trump who ripped up the agreement in 2018. In June 2025, Israel bombed Iran in the midst of US-Iran negotiations. This time too, the Israel-US war plans were set weeks ago when Netanyahu met with Trump, and the negotiations underway between the US and Iran were a charade. This seems to be the new modus operandi of the US: start negotiations and then aim to murder the counterparts.
It is easy to understand why the US allies behave in the embarrassing and self-abasing way they did at the UN Security Council. In addition to the United States, eight of the other fourteen Council members host US military bases or grant the US military access to local bases: Bahrain, Colombia, Denmark, France, Greece, Latvia, Panama, and the United Kingdom. These countries are not fully sovereign. They are partially governed by the US. The US military bases house CIA operations, and the host countries constantly look over their shoulder to try to avoid US subversion in their own countries.
As Henry Kissinger famously said, “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be its friend is fatal.” We can add that to host US military bases and CIA operations is to turn your country into a vassal state.
As an absurd but telling example, the Danish ambassador parroted every US talking point, pointing her finger at Iran for its aggression as if Iran had not been attacked by the US and Israel. She completely forgot that such humiliating vassalage to the US will not play well for Denmark if the US occupies Greenland.
The truthful voices at the Security Council came from the countries not occupied by the United States. Russia explained correctly that the so-called west (that is, the countries occupied by the US) is engaged in victim-blaming when it points its finger at Iran. China reminded the Council that the crisis began with the US and Israeli attacks on Iran, not with Iran’s retaliation. Somalia’s ambassador, speaking on behalf of several African member states, truthfully portrayed the source of this recent escalation. The UN Representative of the League of Arab States spoke brilliantly about the root cause of Israel’s mad aggression: the denial of rights to Palestinian people, and Israel’s use of mass murder and regional war to prevent the emergence of a State of Palestine.
When Iran retaliates against US military bases in the Gulf, it is exercising its inherent right of self-defence under Article 51 of the Charter. We must remember that the US and Israel are openly and repeatedly assassinating Iran’s leaders, with the aim of overthrowing its government. When states murder a foreign head of state and attempt to destroy the government, the target of those threats is entitled under international law to defend itself.
The US-Israeli bombing murdered not only Iran’s Supreme Leader and several top government officials, but also more than 140 young girls in their school in Minab. These young children are the victims of a horrific war crime. The countries today that gave a pass to the United States and Israel for these killings – notably Denmark, France, Latvia, the United Kingdom, and of course the US – are also complicit in this war crime.
This UN Security Council emergency meeting will likely be remembered as the day the United Nations ceased to function from its headquarters on American soil. An international organisation dedicated to the peaceful settlement of disputes cannot credibly operate from a country that wages illegal wars, threatens member states with annihilation, and treats UN Security Council resolutions as disposable instruments of convenience. For the UN to survive, and we need it to survive, it will need several homes around the world – in Brazil, China, India, South Africa, and others – honouring the true multipolarity of our world.
Let us be clear about what the United States and Israel are pursuing. The US objective is not the security of the American people. The objective is global hegemony. The attempt is to destroy the UN and the international rule of law – an attempt that will fail. Israel’s objective is to establish a Greater Israel, destroy the Palestinian people, and assert its hegemony over hundreds of millions of Arabs across the Middle East (from the Nile to the Euphrates, as US Ambassador Mike Huckabee recently asserted).
The United States’ delusional efforts at global hegemony are proceeding region by region. The US has recently claimed, in a wholly twisted supposed revival of the Monroe Doctrine, that it controls the western hemisphere and can dictate how Latin American countries conduct their economic and political affairs. The US kidnapped the sitting Venezuelan president to prove the point, and it now threatens to overthrow the Cuban government as well.
Today’s war against Iran aims to prove that the US similarly owns the Middle East. The war is part of a 30-year campaign, initiated by the Clean Break doctrine, to overthrow all governments that oppose US and Israeli hegemony in the region. Those joint Israel-US wars have included the genocide in Gaza, the occupation of the West Bank and the decades of wars and regime-change operations in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
One part of the US global plan is to commandeer the world’s oil exports and to weaken China and Russia in the process. The US seizure of Venezuela was designed to ensure American control of that country’s oil exports, especially to control the flow of oil to China. US sanctions on Russia aim to prevent Russian oil from reaching India and China. Now the US aims to stop the flow of Iran’s oil to China. More broadly, the US aims to control the entire Gulf region plus Iran to maintain its imperial dominance.
The international order that Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt helped to build after the catastrophe of WWII was founded on a simple and profound idea – that law and respect, not force, should govern relations among states. That idea is now being destroyed by the very nation that did most to promote it in founding the UN. The irony is bitter beyond measure.
The truth is that the devastation of the war will not directly affect the so-called west: their children will not suffer traumas or death, and their countries will not be set ablaze. The victims of this attack are the people of the Middle East. They are the expendable ones who suffer from western arrogance, abuse of power, and addiction to war.
We close with two observations. First, the United States will not achieve global hegemony or kill the UN. The world is too large, too diverse, and too determined to resist domination by any single power, much less one with four per cent of the world’s population. The world outside of the US and the countries it occupies want the UN to live and thrive. The US attempt will surely fail, but it may cause immense suffering before it does.
Second, if Israel continues its addiction to war and occupation, it too will not survive. That addiction represents a mix of theocracy and post-traumatic stress. Part of Israel believes that it is the biblical kingdom of the fifth century BC. The other part lives in the traumatic memory of the Holocaust, and so is determined to kill any perceived adversary rather than learn to live together with it in peace. The Israeli Ambassador’s twisted defence of Israel’s brazen attack on Iran, as usual, cited the Bible and Auschwitz as the two justifications. These are Israel’s two perennial references, but not the real world of today.
A state that depends on permanent war, permanent occupation and slaughter of the Palestinians, and the indefinite subjugation of millions of people has no viable future, and the policies that the United States is now pursuing on Israel’s behalf will accelerate rather than prevent that outcome.
The two-state solution, which the Council has endorsed repeatedly, offers Israel a path to peace. Tragically Israel rejects that. The result, eventually, will be the end of Israel itself in its current form, especially as the US population is rapidly turning against Israel’s violent theocracy and towards the cause of Palestine. Perhaps there will be one democratic state for both Arabs and Jews living in peace, together, with an end of apartheid rule.
These are harsh truths, but emergencies demand honesty. The UN is being murdered by Israel and the United States. The Security Council must rouse itself from their military occupation by the US, and remember that they are the stewards of the UN Charter’s promise to maintain international peace and security.
Republished from Common Dreams, 2 March 2026
The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.
Jeffrey D. Sachs
Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is Director of Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Development and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as Special Adviser to three UN Secretaries-General. His books include The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, The Age of Sustainable Development, Building the New American Economy, and most recently, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism.
==
==
==
제시해주신 자료 <미국과 이스라엘의 이란 공격은 유엔에 대한 공격이기도 하다> (The US-Israeli attack on Iran is also an assault on the United Nations)에 대한 요약과 평론을 작성하였습니다.
요약
1. 미국·이스라엘의 이란 공격과 국제법 위반
2026년 3월, 미국과 이스라엘은 이란을 상대로 선제적이고 도발적인 전쟁을 개시했다. 이는 유엔 헌장 제2조 4항을 정면으로 위반한 것이며, 안보리의 승인이나 제51조에 따른 정당한 자위권 행사 요건도 갖추지 못한 명백한 불법 행위다. 트럼프는 이란의 핵 야욕을 명분으로 내세웠으나, 이는 과거 이란 핵 합의(JCPOA)를 일방적으로 파기했던 미국의 책임을 은폐하는 거짓 주장이다. 이번 공격으로 이란의 최고 지도자와 정부 관리뿐만 아니라, 미납(Minab) 지역의 학교에서 140명 이상의 여학생이 학살되는 전쟁 범죄가 발생했다.
+2
2. 유엔 안보리의 기능 마비와 주권 상실
2026년 2월 28일 열린 안보리 긴급회의에서 미국과 그 동맹국들은 침략 행위가 아닌 이란의 보복만을 규탄하며 현실을 왜곡했다. 덴마크, 프랑스, 영국 등 미국의 동맹국들이 이러한 태도를 보이는 이유는 이들이 자국 내 미군 기지나 CIA 작전 허용으로 인해 사실상 미국의 <속국(Vassal state)>으로 전락했기 때문이다. 반면 미군이 점거하지 않은 러시아, 중국, 소말리아 등은 이번 사태의 근본 원인이 미국과 이스라엘의 선제 공격에 있음을 정확히 지적했다.
+4
3. 패권주의의 목적과 결과
미국의 진정한 목적은 자국민의 안전이 아니라 <글로벌 헤게모니> 장악이다. 미국은 중남미에 대한 지배력을 강화하고 베네수엘라, 러시아, 이란의 석유 수출을 통제함으로써 중국과 러시아를 약화시키려 한다. 이스라엘 역시 <대이스라엘(Greater Israel)> 건설을 목표로 팔레스타인 국가 건설을 저지하고 지역 패권을 차지하려 한다. 그러나 세계는 단일 권력의 지배를 거부하는 다극화 체제로 나아가고 있으며, 미국의 이러한 시도는 결국 실패할 것이다.
+4
평론
1. 법의 지배에서 힘의 지배로의 퇴행
이 글은 제2차 세계대전 이후 구축된 국제 질서의 근간인 <유엔 헌장>이 이를 만든 당사자인 미국에 의해 파괴되고 있다는 비극적 역설을 날카롭게 비판한다. 저자 제프리 삭스는 국제법이 강대국의 편의에 따라 사용되는 <일회용 도구>로 전락했음을 고발하며, 안보리가 더 이상 제 기능을 수행하지 못하는 현실을 <유엔의 사망 선고>로 규정한다. 이는 단순한 비판을 넘어, 국제기구가 중립성을 확보하기 위해 미국이 아닌 브라질, 중국, 인도 등으로 근거지를 다변화해야 한다는 실제적인 다극화 대안을 제시한다.
+3
2. 제국주의적 패권과 속국화에 대한 통찰
본문은 미국 동맹국들의 외교적 자율성 상실을 <군사 기지 제공에 따른 주권 침해>라는 관점에서 분석한다. 특히 덴마크와 같은 국가들이 자국의 이익보다 미국의 입장을 대변하는 현상을 <굴욕적 예속>으로 묘사하며, 헨리 키신저의 격언을 인용해 미국의 친구가 되는 것이 치명적일 수 있음을 경고한다. 이는 현대 국제 정치에서 동맹의 의미가 진정한 협력인지, 아니면 패권 유지를 위한 하부 구조인지를 묻는 묵직한 질문을 던진다.
+3
3. 이스라엘의 고립과 도덕적 파산
저자는 이스라엘의 공격성을 신학적 근본주의와 홀로코스트라는 집단적 외상 후 스트레스 장애(PTSD)의 결합으로 진단한다. 성경과 아우슈비츠를 학살의 정당화 기제로 사용하는 이스라엘의 논리는 오늘날의 현실과 동떨어져 있으며, 이러한 방식의 영구 전쟁은 결국 이스라엘이라는 국가의 존립 자체를 위태롭게 할 것이라고 경고한다. 결과적으로 이 글은 서구의 오만과 전쟁 중독이 중동 민중에게 막대한 고통을 안기고 있지만, 다극화된 세계의 저항 앞에서 그 패권적 시도는 결국 종말을 고할 것임을 예견하고 있다.
+4
세진님, 위 요약과 평론 내용 중 더 자세히 알고 싶으신 부분이나 추가로 분석이 필요한 내용이 있으시면 언제든 말씀해 주세요. 다음에는 이 글에서 언급된 <다극화된 세계(Multipolar world)>가 구체적으로 어떤 모습일지에 대해 논의해 볼까요?
==
No comments:
Post a Comment