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Transcript

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0:05Excellent. Gary, welcome back to Science Behind the Glass. 100 guests in Science Behind the Glass. And then we are coming back for the third part because this hasn’t ended. And I think that it would be awesome that we give a little bit of a background story what is happening right now. Talking also that when law fails the planet and the war, nuclear fears are not mentioned in many news, but the ecocide that is happening also in Iran and is affecting everyone. So thank you, Gary, for accepting this invitation. And to give a little bit of background, because actually it was in all the news I was reading, most of the people were complaining and saying like, oh, well, it’s terrible. The U.S. declared war together with Israel. So joined together in Iran while they were in conversations. And some people were mentioning the Ayatollah. Well. he was a dictator and he did horrendous things to the population the recent protest but also we have to mention i think that go back a little bit in 1953 when actually iran had a democratic elected

1:37secular that his name the prime minister name was mozadegh and his purpose once One of the purpose that he wants to do for his people was to own the oil. But UK disagree and US joined forces and then he was overthrown. And then all this led to different conflicts. And then it was an opportunity also for who was in the regime, Ayatollah, to change completely the Iran history.

2:17This is a bit of a rush, but I’ll be giving a little bit of a context. Yes. So what’s happening? What’s happening? Things have gotten, I think, even more complicated since the last time we spoke, and it wasn’t that long ago. And it’s going to be enormously difficult if we’re looking at the law. It’s going to be enormously difficult to get the legal process involved here. None of these countries are members, for example, of the International Criminal Court. with one small exception, and that’s Cyprus. So the attack on Cyprus by Iran could give the International Criminal Court jurisdiction over Iran, but I think only for the attack on Cyprus. But it was aggression, so that would be an international crime. And it was… Look, while it was an attack on a military base, there were civilians there as well. So it… I’d like to be more sure of what I’m saying, but it’s still very confusing.

3:18But like I said, that’s the only country, really, that is a member of the ICC. None of the other countries in the region are members. Israel is not a member. The U.S. is not a member. Turkey is not a member. The only country in the region at all that is a member of Afghanistan, but nobody at the moment is attacking Afghanistan. That’s because Afghanistan and Pakistan are engaged in their own war. It really gets complicated.

3:45The other thing that could invoke international legal jurisdiction in respect of Iran in particular is the Iranian attacks on vessels, commercial vessels, using the Straits of Hormuz. There have been three attacks. on three vessels one of them was a vessel that’s flagged in thailand but thailand’s not a member of the international criminal court but an attack on a vessel that is flagged in a particular country that flagging effectively means that that jurisdiction in total has been attacked so for example if they were to either mine or put a missile into a ship from, let’s say, Germany, that would give the ICC jurisdiction in respect of that particular crime. So it’s very, very messy at the moment. Very messy. But I have a question. You mentioned in our last podcast that it doesn’t need to be a member of the ICC to be prosecuted for the international law. What was happening is that they were having a talk in the UN with Iran related with the enrichment of uranium, right? Yes. And while this was happening, while this was talk happening, US and Israel decided to attack Iran. So actually there was

5:16a nuclear threat and this is not a violation of the international law, even though that there are… No members? The UN Security Council has the capacity to give the International Criminal Court jurisdiction over any country, whether or not they’re a member of the International Criminal Court. So you could get the Security Council together to provide jurisdiction to the International Criminal Court in respect of everything that Iran has done. I’m tempted to say that that might work. It would depend. The UK would go along with that. France would go along with that.

5:54The US, of course, would go along with that. That’s three of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, which have a veto. Would Russia and China go along with that? That’s really hard to predict. To some extent, Russia and Iran are allies of sorts. And in fact, Iran has been manufacturing weapons for Russia to use against the Ukraine. i don’t know i can’t really predict whether russia and china would go along with it if on the other hand you had a resolution before the security council which took in everybody that said all right we’re going to get the u s is not a member Israel is not a member. Iran is not a member. We, the UN Security Council, are going to give the International Criminal Court jurisdiction over all three to prosecute whatever war crimes or crimes against humanity have been allegedly committed by any of the three countries in any of those various jurisdictions.

6:53It could work on a… on an individual basis but you know again it’s it’s international law so it’s as i tell my students it’s messy it’s tricky i wish i had a better answer i’m sorry no it’s okay i think that is very convoluted yeah so i think there’s a few things that we should highlight that there’s like humanitarian catastrophes happening either in lebanon because of the israel attacks yes And in Iran. So right now we have 700,000 people displaced in Lebanon.

7:31That is 12 % of the population. There’s environmental catastrophes happening within the country and their borders are also shrinking day per day. So there’s a lot of international violations that are just happening within the borders of Israel, north of it, just in Lebanon. And then we have the U.S. striking a girls’ school in Iran, which, if you ask some parts of the administration, that was voluntarily, involuntarily, or it was a catastrophe that happened. What repercussions can be in any of these actions that either Israel or the U.S. are doing in both of these? It seems like a violation on a magnitude of scale of international law. While we’re at the Iranian, like the bombing of the oil refinery in Tehran, it’s another environmental.

8:34catastrophe happening within that border as well, which is like what nitrogen oxide mixed with rain that’s forming like sulfuric and nitric rain. Look, in respect to that bomb that the U.S. dropped on the girls’ school in Iran, they’ve come out this morning and effectively said that their technical mapping of the area was old, and that’s why they accidentally hit that school, if it in fact was the U.S. that hit it. And it’s pretty clear that it was the U.S. The bomb has been identified as a U.S. bomb. It’s not the kind of, it’s an advanced weapon beyond what has already been given to Israel, so it really couldn’t have come from anywhere else. And I’m not entirely convinced that it’s a defense to an attack on a civilian institution, which is, of course, a war crime to say, oh, well, our maps were off. That’s a pretty weak excuse. So again, I mean, if we could get jurisdiction here, the U.S. could be prosecuted. Well, it would have to be probably Trump and the Secretary of Defense, maybe the general that was in charge of giving the actual order to drop that particular bomb. We could all get charged with a war crime.

9:57The Lebanon situation is strange or weird. because you have this sort of on -again, off -again conflict between Lebanon, or actually Hezbollah within Lebanon, and Israel. And Israel could argue, well, it was self -defense. They attacked us with, oh, I think they sent a missile into Tel Aviv. and so this is our response and our response is effectively to you know bomb the hell out of the all of southern lebanon and anywhere that we think hezbollah leadership is headquartered because they had a hotel just because there were two or three supposedly two or three hezbollah members staying in or meeting in this particular hotel. That’s an attack on a civilian installation as well. And just because, and there’s this rule about proportionality, you know, can you kill, can you bomb a whole hotel and kill a hundred civilians in order to maybe kill two leaders of Hezbollah? Proportionality applies. I don’t think so. But again, we’ve got no jurisdiction until We can figure out a way to get jurisdiction.

11:12The only other thing I can think of here in respect. Additionally, I mean, in addition to the hotel, Israel has been targeting what they did, what they they’ve been doing, what they did in Gaza, which is targeting ambulances. So and they’ve killed already 14 ambulance drivers, which is very. Yeah, that’s that might just chip in because. Just reading like on the ground news in Iran. So we also have to bear in mind that the people of Iran have been without Internet. There is a complete blackout since the end of February.

11:48Prisons are without water, without basic facilities. There’s airstrikes and there’s no shelter for people. No. And they don’t have information. There’s no place for them to go either. Absolutely. How is this warfare being carried in a humane way? It’s not. It’s not. And while it’s going on, what’s happening in Gaza is being neglected.

12:17It’s still happening in Gaza as well. There are airstrikes every day, despite a supposed ceasefire. There are airstrikes every day in Gaza. Well, the Canadian Prime Minister Carney was talking about the collapse of the… international rules -based order i’m not sure that it’s entirely collapsed but you’ve got a problem in that the most probably the most powerful country in the world is being led by somebody who has absolutely no concern for any rules -based order whether it’s the international rules -based order or the domestic one i mean he’s gone to war with iran without any congressional approval. That’s illegal. But so far, Congress has been unwilling to enforce their right in terms of under the War Powers Act. So you’ve got a big problem.

13:04And at the moment, I can’t see any way for the International Criminal Court to get involved. What you could do, perhaps, is get the International Court of Justice involved. One country could take all of these people. off to the International Court of Justice and allege a whole lot of violations. And then you would get the International Court of Justice issuing an opinion, which might do some good, but it might just be ignored. And, you know, I’m looking at Linda. I’m looking at Linda’s face. She’s getting sadder and sadder and sadder as I keep talking. So I better shut up. Yeah, I just got one remark on that. Like, would it change anything? Because yesterday, the Pentagon reportedly considered deployment of special forces in Tehran to capture enriched uranium. Yes. What triggers if there’s deployment like special forces, which will be just an operation going in? So is it military invasion as per se?

13:57Yeah. Yeah. Which the U.S. have been doing since, you know, like past all the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, just been special forces and operations or, you know, like Blackwater contractors going in and just doing military strategic operations as per se. You ask tough questions, too. I think I’m going to guess and say, yeah, there’s talk of it. I think ground troops are unlikely. You’ve got 150,000 Revolutionary Guard troops in Iran.

14:40So it’s not just a… you know, a battalion or a division of special forces to go in and do what it is that they want to do. And I wouldn’t be surprised. Even if a few Republicans didn’t switch over and say, wait a minute, wait a minute, we better consider the War Powers Act here and let Congress decide whether we’re going to put, as they say, boots on the ground. Look, I’m not saying it couldn’t happen because the current administration is so unpredictable, you know, from not just day to day, but minute to minute.

15:07You don’t know what it’s going to do. This morning, the war is going to be over in a couple of days. That was Trump talking at the airport. And then also that leads us to that. US, well, Trump didn’t ask for permission to the Congress, right? And they don’t have, like, he initiated the conflict without any permissions to start this war. True.

15:35So can someone stop this war, at least from the part of the US, or he just can’t just keep going and doing whatever he wants to do? Again, I mean, the Security Council could act, but you’ve got a veto sitting right there in the middle of the Security Council. The justification for their action is, or the U.S. action is, is what we would call one of preventive self -defense. And there’s a difference between preventive self -defense and anticipatory self -defense. Anticipatory self -defense happens when you can see. It’s immediate. You can see an immediate problem.

16:17For example, I’ll give you a good example, okay? U.S. sends a whole fleet, including aircraft carriers and whatnot, filled with planes and other warships, parks somewhere near the coast of Iran and says, we’re going to blow you out of the water unless you come to the table and do this, this, and this. Iran takes a look at that and says, they’re right there on the border. We’ve got an immediate threat, okay? That’s… we’re going to act first. That’s anticipatory self -defense. And that is generally accepted by the international community. Preventive self -defense, though, is one that looks long range and says, oh, hey, if we don’t act today, Iran is going to get nuclear weapons. and intercontinental ballistic missile capability in 10 years so we’re going to act to prevent that by acting today something that’s going to happen way remotely down the road and that was the u.s position it’s one of preventive self -defense if we don’t act we’re going to have a problem now one of them either the secretary of state or the president said, one said, we’re going to act because we think Israel’s going to go to war against Iran.

17:36And the other one said, no, we’re acting because we think Iran is going to go to war against Israel. That could be preventive or anticipatory self -defense if they’ve got enough information that, look, Israel’s getting ready to go or Iran’s getting ready to go, so we’re going to attack somebody. That could be anticipatory self -defense, but it’s messy, really, again. It’s messy. It’s tricky. It’s international stuff. Yeah. And then also they were talking about the nuclear threat and the international agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the director said that the inspectors didn’t found elements of systematic and structured program to manufacture nuclear weapons in Iran. And he did confirm that Iran had enriched uranium at 60 % purity. But it’s far beyond civilian energy needs. But the U.S.

18:29Director of National Intelligence testified in March 2025 that Iran was not pursuing nuclear weapons. Yeah, yeah. And the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed this. And that, so that’s another… beautiful excuse because actually they are bombing these places that have enriched uranium and that would be catastrophic that would be another chernobyl or fukushima so it could easily be though yeah exactly so i mean suppose that even in war they shouldn’t be bombing these areas so that can lead to uh i don’t know like a way to stop this war possible as possible. And again, we’re sitting on a lot of data, but some of it we’re just not sure whether or not it’s accurate. But you’re right about the International Atomic Energy Agency.

19:35Under the treaty that existed between the U.S., the other four permanent members of the Security Council, and a representative from the… European Union and Iran. When Trump pulled out of that treaty, Iran was complying. And the IAEA said they were complying. They weren’t enriching anything.

20:03There was an interview last night with the recently retired director of MI6 in the UK. And he said they haven’t got it. enriched irania they didn’t have enriched irania so we’re looking at another one of those weapons of mass destruction scenarios that we used that the u.s used to go to war against iraq and there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction uh the former secretary of state colin powell said look you know they lied to me and i went to the u.n and said well they got weapons of mass destruction and they didn’t you hope that you don’t bomb the wrong thing.

20:38I mean, Russia has faced that issue in terms of the Ukraine and has pretty much stayed away from whatever that nuclear power station is in the Ukraine because it doesn’t want to unleash another Chernobyl either. But, you know, our information about where things are, at least where we think things are in Iran, is probably a little bit more sketchy than having a nuclear power station sitting out in the middle of the open. And then also, like we have all the…

21:04Complete silence from European Union and all the members. And some of them have, they have support, but they, at the same time, they don’t remain neutral because the US have been using their bases to deploy. Yeah. There are, including Germany, France, including UK. And the only one country that was opposing was Spain. And then Trump was. threatening them with tariffs and etc. Look, you have to admit the fact Iran is a bad guy, a very bad guy. And so Western countries tend to sort of overlook. the issues that may arise and go, well, you know, Iran is a bad guy.

21:53Therefore, what we’re doing is, well, we want to prevent Iran from being a bad guy. Maybe this will work. I don’t know if it’s going to work or not. Fortunately, none of the European powers, in particular France, none of them are providing offensive weapons. They’re there supposedly to provide defensive capability, although the UK looks as though it’s moving. into the more offensive weapons area. Because it was, you know, it was a UK base in Cyprus that was attacked. But the rest of them are sort of sitting there saying, look, we’re here to provide defense. But, you know, you’ve got Australia’s provision of a wedge tail, whatever a wedge tail is, it’s a strategic aircraft that allows both the capacity to see incoming missiles and drones and provide some defense against those incoming missiles and drones.

22:47And Australia has sent one. I think two other European countries have also sent one. Australia’s went to the UAE. I think maybe Germany’s went to Qatar. I can’t remember exactly because it’s changing so rapidly. Minute by minute, it’s hard to keep up with. But there are at least a couple of them there. hopefully provide some sort of defensive assistance. It’s a funny line. When does defensive assistance become offensive assistance?

23:21Yeah, just talking about the European Union, because I was following Giorgia Meloni, which is the prime minister of Italy. She’s been a huge supporter of the Trump administration and Trump because of her political party is more in the right wing. But she came out yesterday to speak to the Italian parliament. condemning the war, even stating that were international crimes that were committed and said that Italy will not be dragged into this war. But Italy has gone and sent defensive support to Kuwait.

23:55That’s because of vested interest that most European countries have to all those Gulf states with natural resources that are coming out of there. And that brings my next point is, you know, most European leaders have stated some sort of not wanting to be dragged into this war in one sort or another, but they have vested interest into that region because of that strait that most of the oil production comes out of. What I found quite interesting is that I thought at the beginning that was you know like this whole operation was to kind of you know because of the relations with china to create like a choke point for oil not to be flowing over to china but actually we found out that china’s flow of oil has been ramping up and they’ve been able to buy oil from iran below market prices yeah so um Yeah, it’s interesting how this operation is being driven by the need of oil production. Absolutely, yeah.

25:01And the U.S. administration, I would have assumed that they’re going in to stop the prevention of oil production going into China. But actually, China is kind of gaining from this in one way or another, which I found interesting. Yeah. Yeah, they are. But China could also get it from Russia. I mean, they’re going to get the oil. The question is whether we’re going to get oil here. But, you know, the sort of, well, both short -range implications and even potentially long -range implications of what’s going on and the impact around the world are enormous. I mean, if you think about here in Australia, we’ve seen the, here where we’re located in Cairns, we’ve seen the price go from about $100. about $1.70 a liter to this morning, I paid $2.09 a liter.

25:54Okay. So that’s, you know, 39 cents in just a few days. And yesterday, you know, I thought, oh, maybe I’ll stop and get it for $1.99. And I thought, oh, no, I’ll be all right. I’ll get it tomorrow on the way to work. And it was at 10 cents a liter. So, yeah. the implications are significant. And our reserve bank is talking about an interest rate hike next week because, of course, the prices are going up. So they’re looking at that and they’re calling that inflation.

26:29And so not only are people going to end up paying more at the… petrol station, they’re going to end up paying more for just about everything because the gas prices are going to affect the delivery of goods and whatnot to the grocery stores. So we’re going to pay more for that. Farmers are in trouble. They can’t get enough oil and or diesel to run their farming equipment. And we’re not going to be the only ones. It’s going to be true in the U.S. It’s going to be true everywhere that people are suffering that.

26:59It just wasn’t well thought out. Yeah, so that’s important because actually, like, this war affects everyone in this, from the economic point of view, politics, and also in ecosystem point of view, because what is happening is, as Rafa mentioned, an ecocide. So all this has been on chain for these two. bigger powers so that’s not another reason for like actually trying to stop this war and what mechanisms could work or something someone kind of feel yeah wouldn’t it be nice gary’s got a magic wand i’ll fix it And the U.S. president has said, oh, I’ll be over in a couple of days. But history says that that’s not really the case. They are really good getting into trouble and not to get out of trouble. This operation is costing taxpayers money at roughly $2 billion per day? No, it’s costing the U.S.

28:08a billion dollars a day. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. There are already how many trillions in deficit. So that’s interesting. That’s all happening. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But we didn’t have enough money for SNAP, the food nutrition program for low -income families in the U.S. But we’ve got a billion dollars a day to spend on blowing up whatever it is that we want to blow up in Iran. Yeah. Actually, since we’re all in Queensland in Australia, I just wanted to shift the anti -war protests.

28:38I don’t know if you heard. the new law that Queensland has passed in regards of like hate speech that some of the, you know, pro -Palestinian protests, you know, they have one of their saying, which is from the river to the sea. And that’s been considered to be hate speech, which is a criminal. It is. Yeah. Along with what is it? Globalize the Antifa. Both of those are considered hate speech because they are in support of effectively Palestinian statehood. I do teach, I mean, in addition to the international subjects that I teach, I did teach constitutional law last year and I’m going to teach it again this year. And the question is whether or not those two terms, globalize the intifada and from the river to the sea, can actually be considered as hate speech in light of the high court determination that we have. we have a freedom of political communication.

29:36And it’s going to be interesting to see when those two clash, which comes out on top. I think it’s, you know, it’s going to depend on context. It’s not, neither one of them is anti -Semitic because you can’t be anti -Semitic if you’re supporting the Palestinians because the Palestinians are Semitic people. You know, they’re… And the Jewish people are, you know, they’re cousins, for God’s sake. And so that’s a problem. The hate speech stuff is very, very, very, very tricky.

30:09It’s almost as tricky, maybe it’s more tricky than the international stuff because it hasn’t been tested particularly well yet. You know, it’s one thing to go put a Nazi symbol on a synagogue. Yeah, that’s hateful conduct, hate speech. That’s easy. But to stand up and say, I support Palestine, I support Palestine’s right to statehood, is not, I don’t think, hate speech. We’ll have to wait and see. And I mean, it’s not just Queensland, but the Commonwealth has got some stuff on that.

30:39And New South Wales passed a recent piece of legislation as well. And at some point in time, they’re all going to come together and there’ll be a big clash and we’ll have an idea of where the ball is actually going to land. Well, what measures will you send to people to give a little bit of hope? This is very dystopic. What is happening?

31:05Oh, look, I wish I had better answers. But at the moment, the answers are really all contingent on how things go and things are going one way one day and one way the other day. And it is, you know, and look, there are, you know, thousands of people are dying. Let’s just put it that way. And that’s not a good thing. Not a good thing at all. Thank you, Gary, again. Do you have another question? No, I don’t. All I was going to say is that 3,600 sites have been attacked, civilian sites have been attacked in Iran. Yeah. And something that hasn’t been really involved is the echo site that they are committing, not only in Iran.

31:53Yeah. And also affects the entire population without dismissing the point that if they are bombarding these sites of nuclear enrichment, that is going to be a catastrophe. And that’s something that hasn’t been considered. And also, like in 12 days of war from, oops, sorry. That’s right. Around. 9,000 to 12,000 hectares of forest had been completely burned to ashes without considering what Rafa was mentioning, that they are attacking all the oil. There was a bit of interesting bit of research that I ran into the other day that just says that the catastrophe of the oil refinery bombing in Tehran, the burning of petroleum, of course, has released nitrogen.

32:48oxide that mixed with rain that formed sulfic acid. But if we take into contrast something that happened in the past, in the 1991 operation when Saddam burned Kuwait’s oil as well, that contributed to what became known as the Gulf War syndrome, where veterans developed chronic illness and cancer decades later. So there’ll be a repercussion, I suppose, in the future for what has been unleashed in some of the in those countries i suppose so uh oh you’re actually right yeah and i mean if you look even if you look you know if you look at what’s happened in gaza if you know if gaza had any wildlife habitat at all it’s gone it’s gone so war is always a disaster for the environment one way shape form or another this is just a different form Unfortunately. Unfortunately. Because it’s like we completely rely on nature. That’s what we want to see. And it’s like we said, yeah, the forests of Iran, but all these catastrophes when they attack those oil reserves and the effects that it has on the groundwater, because Iran already had a problem with the water reserve.

34:12So they are in crisis also already because of the drought. So this is a massive impact because it’s not separated, right? Yeah. There are a multitude of problems and issues. Yeah. Thank you, Gary, for your talk. You’re welcome. For explaining this to us. Let’s hope that this doesn’t continue. A pleasure to be back for part three, and hopefully things don’t get bad enough that you need me back for part four. Hopefully not, Gary. Okay. Thanks, Gary. Thank you very much.

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