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By Mandy Taheri and Khaleda Rahman
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The United States and Israel have launched strikes on Iran in a "major combat operation" President Donald Trump says is aimed at ending the security threat to Americans posed by Tehran's nuclear program.
"Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.... its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world," Trump said in his speech announcing the attack on Saturday.
For weeks, both sides had been engaged in talks on curtailing Iran's nuclear program but these proved futile. The U.S. president accused Iran of continuing its nuclear development, despite striking the key nuclear sites last year, so Tehran could build a nuclear weapon.
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Iran has repeatedly denied seeking to build nuclear weapons, insisting its program is for peaceful purposes.
Trump also accused Iran of trying to develop long-range missiles which could put the US at attacking reach - something also denied by Tehran. It is a claim that is also not backed up by US intelligence reports and independent weapons monitors.
Three major nuclear facilities—Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan—were damaged in U.S. strikes in June 2025, and the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has said it has been unable to fully assess Iran’s program since Iran curtailed inspector access after the attacks.
The U.S. intelligence community and the IAEA have said that Iran closed its nuclear weapons development program in 2003.
Legality Of Strikes In Doubt
Questions about the legality of Trump’s strikes were circulating earlier this week as the US military moved into place around Iran, and Trump continued to threaten action.
Experts have raised concerns under both international and U.S. domestic law, with critics pointing to Congress’s constitutional power to declare war.
Under international law, the U.N. Charter bars the use of force by one state against another state except for in the cases of self-defense or if there has been U.N. Security Council authorization.
Trump has made the case with his comments this morning that the US and Israeli strikes were "pre-emptive" and aimed at defending the American people.
But this is not a proportionate or necessary response on the available facts of the strength of Iran's nuclear threat, experts say.
"It would be a manifest violation of the United Nations Charter for the United States to strike Iran," Rutgers Law School professor Adil Haque had told Newsweek on Friday prior to Saturday's strikes.
"Under international law, the use of force against another State is illegal unless it is authorized by the U.N. Security Council or is a necessary and proportionate act of self-defense against an actual or imminent armed attack.”
He had said prior to the strikes: “The United States cannot invoke its right of self-defense because Iran has not attacked the United States, is not about to attack the United States, and does not plan to attack the United States.”
Haque also noted that when posed previously with the question of authorizing force against Iran, the U.N. Security Council had "consistently chosen to use economic sanctions to compel Iran to accept limitations and oversight of its nuclear program to ensure that it is not converted into a weapons program in the future.”
When it comes to domestic U.S. law, there are also questions over the legality of the president's actions here, as acts of war need to be approved by Congress.
That's what took place before the 2003 Iraq war where the U.S. also launched military action on the claim that Iraq possessed active weapons of mass destruction (WMD). That was used as a primary justification for the U.S.-led invasion but was later found to be not true.
There is already considerable doubt over Trump's current Iran claim that there is a nuclear weapon or long-range missile threat to the U.S.
But he has also not sought Congress approval before launching the strikes with Israel.
“A key difference is that Congress authorized the use of force against Iraq, but Congress has not authorized the use of force against Iran," Professor Curtis Bradley at the University of Chicago Law School also told Newsweek earlier in the week.
Bradley also pointed out that the president has taken the action based on a threat that is still speculative, and as such arguably not strong enough to warrant such severe action.
“I do not believe that the president has the constitutional authority to wage war on Iran, without congressional authorization, based on speculative claims that Iran might at some point develop nuclear weapons," said Bradley on Friday.
"As a matter of historical practice, the president might also have some authority to conduct limited strikes to protect U.S. interests, but only if the strikes are unlikely to escalate into a broader conflict. I do not think that what is being contemplated fits that description," he added.
Concerns about US and Israeli strikes leading to a wider war or regional conflict in the Middle East have eventuated, as Iran has struck back with their own missile attacks atimed at US sites in the Middle East and US allies in Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.
Fears that this has plunged the Middle East into a wider conflict are also driven by Iran having several allies in the region, whose responses will also be closely watched.
The Houthis, an Iran-backed militia in Yemen, have disrupted global shipping in the Red Sea before with attacks on commercial vessels that pushed many shipping companies to reroute. The group has said their campaign was aimed at ships it claims have links to Israel and will continue as long as the Gaza war persists.
There are also concerns that with the US president actively calling for regime change in Iran, this is a goal that critics say risks miring the U.S. into a long conflict. They point to past U.S. interventions, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq, that expanded into years of deadly and costly warfare.
But experts say that it has become clear during Trump's second term in office that he has not given much heed to legal standards, particularly international law. That has been seen in both the U.S. abduction of former Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro in January and also Trump's threats at one point to take Greenland, potentially by force, from NATO ally Denmark.
On the issue of legality, Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, told Newsweek in a phone interview on Friday: “I think this president is not going to be bothered too much by that.”
Update 28.2.26 06.40 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
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