On 28 February 2026, after days of negotiations, the US and Israel launched a joint attack against the Iran of the Ayatollahs . The bombing was massive and the unthinkable happened: the Israeli Air Force, in a targeted attack, dropped 30 bombs on Ali Khamenei ‘s headquarters , killing the supreme leader and decapitating the top echelons of the regime and the Revolutionary Guard. The bombing has been going on for days and according to Donald Trump, the operation may last more than two weeks. The reaction of the Islamic Republic has not been long in coming, Tehran has struck the Gulf countries, Israel has resumed bombing in southern Lebanon to hit Hezbollah allied with Iran and the armed wing of the ayatollahs in the region. This operation has so far only resulted in a destabilisation of the entire Middle East area.

The Iranian crisis is not just a new chapter in the long-standing instability in the Middle East

Above all, it is a sign of a deeper crisis: that of international law. The American attack and the reactions of the international community show how the legal architecture built after 1945 is today fragile and incapable of governing contemporary conflicts. The United Nations appears today as a container emptied of the political weight and moral suasion that it had exercised, albeit amid many contradictions, after World War II. The rules of international law are treated as empty formulas, devoid of any real capacity to limit the force of states. To add insanity to the demise of the old global order, in the United States, this war is portrayed almost as if it were a video game for teenagers. From Trump’s promotional videos on the airstrike, to the language used, the White House’s communication seems to follow anaesthetic that is perfectly adherent to war games; with the result of producing a substantial disconnect from reality, which does not properly inform public opinion on the consequences of this conflict.

Yet from the rubble of the Second World War, Europe and the West had attempted to build something radically different. The barbarities of the Second World War had marked the collapse of European civilisation and humanity, the Nuremberg Trial marked the rebirth of Western civilisation. The trial was not only the punishment of the defeated Nazi hierarchs, but represented a leap forward in legal civilisation: for the first time in history, the principle was affirmed that even the leaders of a state could be held accountable before the law for crimes committed against humanity. Military victory did not simply turn into revenge, but was translated into a universal principle of responsibility, from which the principle of the universality of human rights derived.

Today, in the Iranian crisis, this principle seems to have been lost

The death of Ali Khamenei does not represent a victory of law, but the result ofmilitary action that substitutes the logic of force for justice. That the ayatollahs’ regime is responsible for gross violations of human rights, the repression of civil liberties and the systematic oppression of women is a fact.

But precisely because of this, the answer should not be the simple physical elimination of a regime’s leader, but the construction of a legal path that would make those crimes judiciable and punishable before the international community. Instead, the result produced by the elimination of the supreme leader seems to confirm the opposite: the Pasdaran immediately appointed Khamenei’s son as the new leader, perpetuating the same system of power. It is a vicious circle of violence and dictatorship that reveals, once again, the lack of any real political vision on the part of the United States. In fact, a credible project of regime change and state building appears to be absent in the American strategy.

Have we really archived international law?

The real absence emerging from this crisis is that of an international court capable of acting with authority and legitimacy. Without such an institution, every conflict runs the risk of turning into a sequence of cross-revenge, in which military force takes the place of justice. In this sense, the destabilisation of the Middle East is not only the result of a regional war, but the symptom of a broader crisis of the global legal order.

This is where Europe’s role comes into play

While the international system built after 1945 now appears threadbare, the European Union still possesses one of the most advanced legal heritages in the world: that represented by the European Court of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, instruments that in recent decades have shown how law can truly limit the power of states and protect the dignity of the individual.

Starting afresh from these principles could be the first step in imagining a new season of international law. It would not simply be a matter of reforming existing institutions, but of rebuilding a system capable of forcefully affirming what Nuremberg had made clear: no political power can consider itself above the law.

Without a new Nuremberg, the only law that will remain will be the law of the fittest

We saw this in Iraq and Afghanistan: military interventions that produced chaos instead of stability. If one thought that ‘history was over’, as Fukuyama claimed, the reality in the Middle East proves the opposite. In that region, political Islam has taken deep root, exporting instability even to the West. This radicalism cannot be defeated with air raids, but with law: with trials that put the leaders responsible for crimes against humanity on trial. The rule of law and the universality of human rights are not imposed with bombs: they must be exercised every day, to finally limit the tyrants’ excessive power.