law

The National Lawyers Guild joins the International Association of Democratic Lawyers in condemning the joint U.S.-Israeli illegal aggression on Iran

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National Lawyers Guild
March 13, 2026

The National Lawyers Guild joins the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) in condemning in the strongest terms the joint attack by the United States and Israel on the Islamic Republic of Iran, launched on the morning of Saturday, February 28, 2026, amid the holy month of Ramadan. 

These attacks constitute another example of the crime of aggression, in blatant violation of article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter and the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity of states, good neighborliness and the peaceful settlement of disputes. International law clearly prohibits both the use of force and the threat to use force against the territorial integrity of any state, and it is also clear that the United States and Israel have deep disregard and contempt for these principles. These attacks further violate the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. president acted unilaterally and lawlessly — without congressional authorization and absent any imminent threat to the U.S. However, it is important to point out the failure and unwillingness of the U.S. Congress to act to respond to Trump’s other unauthorized hostilities in Iran or anywhere. As many have also pointed out there are over 50 members of Congress who have investments in defense companies and directly profit from these illegal wars. 

Neither the U.S. nor Israel has attempted to hide the fact that this aggression is being carried out to facilitate a regime change that they would find amenable to their goals of total domination of the entire region of West Asia militarily, economically and politically, and to deprive the Palestinian people under occupation and facing an ongoing genocide of support for their capacity to resist and free themselves of this unlawful occupation. We are reminded of the 12-day war of June 2025, another illegal aggression perpetrated by the same parties against Iran, which the NLG and IADL also strongly condemned. The persistent lack of accountability or any meaningful consequences for those responsible has not merely enabled further warmongering and destruction; it has entrenched a culture of impunity that effectively amounts to complicity.

Once again, we note that purported negotiations that claimed to seek a peaceful resolution or to address nuclear development were used as a sham in an attempt to lower Iranian defenses, as we have seen before in the context of the invasion of Iraq. Israeli officials have openly stated that they have planned this attack over months and weeks, spanning a larger period of time than any of the negotiation rounds. Such aggression not only underlines the bad faith of the United States and Israel but also discourages nations from participating in peace talks or negotiations, when it has been made clear that these states view such negotiations only as a way to pass time until a new aggression is launched. 

This aggression follows by less than two months the U.S. attack on Venezuela and the unlawful abduction of its president and first lady, and comes amid the ongoing war threats and oil blockade imposed on Cuba. This complete disregard for the process of negotiations only encourages nuclear proliferation around the world; we further note that the United States holds the world’s largest supply of nuclear weapons and is the only state to have used them. Further, Israel is an undeclared nuclear power that routinely makes threats based on its nuclear weapons capacity. 

We note that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, is still the subject of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, while pursuing constant war and aggression against the Palestinian people targeted for genocide, Lebanon, Syria, and now, once again, Iran. The aggression is the continuation of the illegal aggression launched last year as well as a continuation of a sustained and deliberate campaign of hostile acts spanning more than 46 years – including sanctions designed to destroy the Iranian economy, coordinated cyber-warfare operations, targeted assassinations and systematic acts of sabotage. 

We urge all states to provide all necessary assistance, consistent with their obligations under international law, to the Islamic Republic of Iran, Palestine, and other nations subjected to unlawful aggression by the United States and Israel,  and to condemn their  serious violations of international law, including genocide. We underline that this aggression is a threat not only to all of the peoples and nations of the West Asian region but to the future of multilateralism, international law, and the territorial integrity of states. Iran, a sovereign nation, has the clear and legitimate right to defend itself against this unlawful aggression. We urge all states to immediately implement an arms embargo on Israel and the U.S., withdraw their ambassadors, and pursue legal actions to hold their military and political officials accountable. 

We cannot rely solely on states or international institutions to end this aggression. We urge all supporters of justice, sovereignty, peace, and international law to participate in mass demonstrations and actions against the aggression on Iran, and to mobilize popular pressure to bring the aggression to an end. We urge all legal organizations, lawyers and human rights organizations to utilize domestic and international systems to hold Israeli and U.S. officials and soldiers accountable for their unlawful aggression against Iran and their acts of genocide in Palestine, as well as to support and defend organizers and social movements against state repression for their work to end war and genocide. 

The Military Law Taskforce (MLT) of the National Lawyers Guild reminds U.S. armed service members that they have the right and the duty to resist and refuse illegal orders. The MLTF pledges to support those who do so, and support service members who protest or stand against this disastrous war.

https://www.nlg.org/nlg-iran-march-2026/

2023 International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism: Sanctions, Blockades, and Economic Coercive Measures – schedule and videos

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Taking Legal Action to Challenge U.S. Atrocities

Hearing schedule and registration: https://sanctionstribunal.org/hearing-schedules/

The launch of the International People’s Tribunal Jan 28, 2023 — sanctionstribunal.org/opening-event/

Webinar: ‘We Charge Imperialism: Sanctions Against the Global Majority’ December 20, 2022 — sanctionstribunal.org/2022/12/20/watch-the-full-video-of-we-charge-imperialism-us-sanctions-against-the-global-majority/

Taking Legal Action to Challenge U.S. Atrocities

Since the end of the Cold War, the world has witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of sanctions regimes, particularly by the United Nations Security Council, the European Union, and the United States. This is due in part to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which ended the deadlock between superpowers at the Security Council. Over the past few decades, sanctions were slowly reconfigured from war time weapons into peacetime policy instruments. In order for this effort to materialize, policymakers, legal scholars, and government officials campaigned to legitimate sanctions as a lawful weapon to punish nations who refuse to submit to the United States and Europe.

The International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism: Sanctions, Blockades, and Economic Coercive Measures approaches economic coercive measures as inherently violent, designed to maintain economic inequality, continue the theft of wealth from the Global South, and preserve racial hierarchy in the international system. Such measures are structurally incapable of reform, and cannot incorporate humanitarian concerns. The Tribunal is a collective effort to build systems of accountability—rooted in global cross-movement solidarity—both within and outside of the law, to challenge the violence of imperialism through sanctions. We interrogate sanctions not from the perspective of those who enforce them, but from the perspective of those most impacted by them, namely the peoples of Asia, Africa, and South America.

WHY HOLD A PEOPLE’S TRIBUNAL?

People’s Tribunals capture the ethos of self-determination and internationalism that was expressed through twentieth century anti-colonial struggles and was institutionalized in the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Cuba. They bring together movement lawyers, scholars, and organizers from around the world and are designed by and accountable to the social movements and communities in which they are rooted. Operating outside of the logics and institutions of capitalist and imperialist law, People’s Tribunals make decisions that may not be binding and do not have the force of law, but their achievements in a political and discursive register inspire and provide the tools necessary for present and future organizing. People’s Tribunals allow the oppressed to judge the powerful, defining the content as well as the scope of the procedures, which reverses the norm of the powerful creating and implementing the law.

There is a long tradition of radical organizers and lawyers using the law to put capitalism and imperialism on trial. Organized by the Civil Rights Congress, and supported by the Communist Party as well as a host of Black leftist luminaries, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Claudia Jones, and Paul Robeson, We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief of a Crime of the United States against the Negro People, indicted the political-economic system of capitalism and white supremacy for inflicting numerous forms of structural and physical violence on Black people in the U.S. as well as drawing parallels to U.S. imperialist violence abroad. The Russell Tribunal was set up in 1966 to judge U.S. military intervention and war crimes in Vietnam. The same format reemerged in later Russell Tribunals dealing with the U.S.-backed Brazilian and Argentinian military dictatorships (1964 and 1976, respectively), the U.S.-backed coup in Chile (1973), and the U.S.-European interventions against Iraq (1990, 2003). The 2016 International Tribunal for Democracy in Brazil critically examined the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and the role of the U.S. government. Organized in Brussels by both Philippine and international groups, the 2018 International People’s Tribunal on the Philippines exposed and condemned the multiple forms of state violence visited on the people of the Philippines since Rodrigo Duterte became president in 2016. And finally, the U.S. government was put directly on trial by a pair of innovative People’s Tribunals, including the 2007 International Tribunal on Katrina and Rita and the 2018 International Tribunal on U.S. Colonial Crimes Against Puerto Rico.