Episode Description
Join host Professor Sahar Aziz in her conversation with Professor Maryam Jamshidi about the political and legal implications of Israel and the United States' unprovoked military attacks against Iran on February 28, 2026.
As Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu publicly admitted, the Israeli government has been preparing for a war to topple the Iranian regime for over 30 years. Knowing they do not possess sufficient military capacity to do it alone, Israel unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the United States to start a war of aggression against Iran under the Bush, Obama and Biden administrations.
The reasons for restraint by past US administration were often the same. Iran posed no direct threat or conducted an imminent attack toward the US that legally justified an offensive war of aggression. The risk of a global economic downfall and the exorbitant price tag of a major war far outweighed the benefits of removing a hostile government. And perhaps most importantly from a military perspective, the United States had no exit strategy.
Indeed, these were the same reasons that led to the Democratic Party winning the White House in 2008 after expensive and endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan after 2001. Republican politicians campaigned on an America First platform in the 2021 elections by explicitly rejecting wars of choice in the Middle East that cost American lives and treasure. And yet, Republican President Donald Trump violated that promise to his constituents and granted Israel its 30-year dream to start an offensive war on Iran despite no credible evidence of an imminent threat by Iran.
The result has been predictably catastrophic for the Middle East and the global economy. The war has engulfed the Gulf states, the Strait of Hormuz is closed to the 20% of global supply of oil and natural gas, energy prices are skyrocketing across the world, Tehran is being bombarded daily by Israel, over 1300 Iranians have been killed thus far, and the war is costing American taxpayers $1 billion per day.
Additional Readings:
Maryam Jamshidi (2025), A Transformational Agenda for National Security, University of Chicago Legal Forum, Vol. 2024, Article 5.
Maryam Jamshidi, Whose Security Matters, 116 AJIL Unbound (2022).
Middle East and South Asia Lectures, Center for Security, Race and Rights
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