Nournews: The conference, titled “International Law Under Assault: Aggression and Self-Defense,” was held in Tehran with the participation of Seyed Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, along with 350 international and domestic guests, including diplomatic delegations, academics, and experts from France, Italy, Greece, Lebanon, Iraq, Ireland, Slovakia, the UK, Finland, Russia, and other regional states.
The event went beyond a standard academic gathering and became a platform to explain the dangerous global shift from a “rules-based order” to a “power-based order.”
Araghchi declared bluntly that the order defended by the West has effectively become a selective tool for advancing U.S. objectives—an order that is activated only when others are to be restrained. He described the U.S. doctrine of “peace through strength” as “hegemony through force,” calling this trend “America’s formal return to the law of the jungle,” where power replaces logic, law, and legal obligations.
Diplomacy: The First Casualty of the 12-Day War
Araghchi devoted a significant part of his remarks to the June 12 attack, calling it “the first shot fired at the negotiating table.” He said Iran and the United States had previously held five rounds of talks in Oman, and a sixth round had been scheduled to begin only two days after the attack.
“Diplomacy was the first casualty of the 12-day war,” he said.
This account carried a clear message to the international community: wars begin not on the battlefield but with political decisions—and their first cost is the destruction of peaceful conflict-resolution mechanisms.
Eslami’s Revelations: The Radio-Pharmaceutical Attack and Safeguards Concerns
Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, revealed another dimension of the incident. He said that for the first time in the world, a registered, identified, and IAEA-monitored nuclear facility had been targeted.
Most striking was his reference to the first site hit:
“The very first location bombed was a facility linked to the production of radio-pharmaceuticals,” he said—an institution whose services benefit millions of patients with severe illnesses.
Eslami emphasized that the facility’s information is precisely the data held by the IAEA, a point that once again heightened concerns over the possible “leakage of sensitive information” within international networks.
Tehran’s Message: Legitimate Defense, Rule of Law, and the World’s Difficult Choice
Both Araghchi and Eslami stressed that Iran’s response was carried out in full accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter, observing the principles of proportionality, necessity, and distinction between military and civilian targets.
Araghchi also described the Zionist regime as “the agent of lawlessness” in the region, noting that it has attacked seven countries over the past two years and is seeking to redraw the map of West Asia. According to him, the recent attack on Tehran was “a full-scale assault on the UN Charter, the non-proliferation regime, and regional security,” carried out under direct U.S. guidance and with NATO’s military support.
The final message of the meeting was clear: the world stands at a decisive crossroads between a ‘rule of power’ and a ‘rule of law,’ and Iran has made its choice—law, collective cooperation, and resistance against coercion.
Tehran’s conference highlighted that the current crisis goes beyond a regional confrontation and signals the beginning of the collapse of the global legal order.
The June 12 attack and the targeting of radio-pharmaceutical facilities serve as stark warnings of the dangerous Western shift toward “the politics of force”—a shift capable of weakening the safeguards system, collective security, and the principles of the UN Charter.
Tehran argued that the only way to contain this trend is a genuine return to law, adherence to established rules, and the strengthening of multilateral mechanisms, while resistance against coercion remains a strategic necessity for protecting regional stability and preventing the complete breakdown of the global order.
NOURNEWS