Violation of International Law and Its Global Consequences

In today's world, relations between nations are based on some rules so-called international law. For more than a hundred years, international law has been the only guarantee for the health of relations between nations, and now the United Nations Security Council is the reference observer for these rules to be properly enforced. Over the centuries, humanity has realized the need to enact laws by agreement between different countries, laws that may have prevented many wars from taking place and international disputes and conflicts through a simple process and saved lots of people from death. However, some countries are now ignoring these laws, the laws which guarantee the survival of peace in the world, and are trying to create tension between countries. One of those cases is Germany, this country started the World War II in the 1940s in violation of international law, and now it is trying to create tension between countries with similar actions, that the examples of which we will discuss in this article.

Asadollah Asadi is an Iranian diplomat who left his base in Austria for a diplomatic mission and was returning to Austria to meet the then Iranian president after completing his diplomatic duties, that got arrested in Germany without any explanation and sent to Belgium, where he was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a fake trial, that violated the 1961 Geneva Convention, which stipulates that no one has the right to detain a diplomatic official and that no court has the power to convict persons with diplomatic passports. In the process, Germany and Belgium committed blatant violations of international law.

Enrique Mora, a Spanish diplomat and senior EU negotiator, traveled to Iran to discuss the resumption of the JCPOA agreement, on his return to Germany, along with two colleagues, Stephen Klement and Bruno Scholl, all of whom had diplomatic passports, arrested by German police and their passports and mobile phones were confiscated. The action of arresting the three diplomats in Germany was a clear violation of the 1961 Geneva Convention.

Given the concrete examples of violations of international law by the German government, regulatory agencies such as the United Nations seem to be very passive in dealing with this issue or unable to deal with it, and if it continues, tensions will arise between countries, whether Asian, European, or American, there will be more confrontation, governments will take retaliatory actions, as we saw the same incidents in the 1940s that led to the World War II, and again possibility of very same unfortunate consequences is predictable. International law has now become a toy in the hands of a number of European and American countries, who use it as a pressure lever against nations whenever they want, and easily violate it whenever their execution is not in their favor. This dual policy is not only visible in the execution of international law, but also in dealing with terrorist groups.

The terrorist group of Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) is one of the cases on which dual policies have been applied. In the 1970s, they fought against the Shah of Iran, who was brought to power by the United States, and then assassinated six American advisers. After the formation of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, they began to fight against the Iranian people, they killed 12,000 people who mostly were ordinary people that among them were women and children. The group was on the US list of terrorist organizations from 1997 to 2012, after which it was removed from the list due to US dual policy, and continued its terrorist activities against Iran with US support. This terrorist group that is based in Albania, has turned this peaceful country into a base for its anti-Iranian actions.

Dual policies and repeated violations of international law are not a small issue to be ignored. Sometimes the lives of innocent people are destroyed and sometimes these actions have the ability to harm ordinary people. With the regard that international law enforcement bodies, such as the United Nations Security Council, speak no words about it, and as long as they do their long lasting bureaucracy, sometimes it takes years to take actions, that the voice of the critics can be heard in the media about the long process of the UN bureaucracy. Therefore, it is up to us to respond to these injustices, even by producing a tweet or expressing our views, because if international law is violated, tensions between countries will easily rise and actions may be taken according to taste of the leaders that make generations to engage the extravagances of a few hostile countries for having more benefits. Likewise, if a country look at terrorists with double standards and use them as a tool, the terrorists will not forget their dirty nature, and they will definitely attack their supporters when they find themselves in a dangerous spot. The hypocritical nature of terrorists causes them to always move in a direction that gets more support, and when they achieve their desires or see their interests in another country, they forget their treaties and will break all their commitments.

As you know, the political and security stability of a country depends on its adherence to international law, and throughout history, whenever we have witnessed devastating wars, its source has been the violation of international law. Arresting diplomats from different countries under false pretenses will not only create tension, but in the near future it will cause a kind of instability in the international relations of that country with other countries, even with its allies, because it is no longer trust to its diplomatic relations. International organizations such as the United Nations are being called upon to take stronger action against violations of diplomatic law and to deal more firmly with countries that violate them, otherwise we will see terrible consequences in dealing countries with each other.