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  "path": "/2026/03/06/the-ethics-of-intervention-in-iran-guest-post/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-06T14:06:10.000Z",
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  "textContent": "“In light of the awful brutality by the Iranian government against the uprising in late December 2025, the case for humanitarian intervention in Iran is not obviously implausible…” But what about the actual intervention going on now? It “fails to meet all the traditional criteria of Just War Theory [and has] even weaker grounds to be deemed humanitarian than the War in Iraq.” So argues James Pattison, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, in the following guest post. Professor Pattison is the author of several books on war, intervention, and global justice, including Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Who Should Intervene? and The Alternatives to War: From Sanctions to Nonviolence. (A version of this post first appeared at the Public Ethics blog of the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace.) The Ethics of Intervention in Iran by James Pattison In justifying the joint United States-Israel airstrikes on Iran, US politicians have adopted humanitarian rhetoric, claiming that their action will enable the liberation of the repressed Iranian population.[1] The leader of the Iranian opposition in exile, Reza Pahlavi (the son of the deposed Shah of Iran), has called the action a “humanitarian intervention”, suggesting that its “target is the Islamic Republic, its repressive apparatus, and its machinery of slaughter”. In light of the awful brutality by the Iranian government against the uprising in late December 2025, the case for humanitarian intervention in Iran is not obviously implausible. The Iranian writer, Hamidreza Zarifinia, argued in early January 2026 that “intervention is not only permissible, but is regarded as a moral duty” and “can be considered entirely legitimate and humanitarian”. In similar vein, writing shortly before the strikes, the Volt party in Europe argued that the Iranians “deserve” intervention “in the face of a mounting number of civilian deaths and unlawful executions”, although cautioned about a US-led military intervention without the authorization of the Security Council and in contravention of the requirements of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine. In this respect, there are echoes of the justifications presented in the buildup to the 2003 War in Iraq, where those supporting the action highlighted the brutality of the Saddam Hussein regime to help defend the war. Like the 2003..\n\nThe post The Ethics of Intervention in Iran (guest post) first appeared on Daily Nous.",
  "title": "The Ethics of Intervention in Iran (guest post)"
}