US Lawmakers Cheer Israeli Attack on Iran UN Expert Says Is Likely War Crime

United States lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have lauded Israel’s strikes on Iran and are stoking more violence, even as a UN expert has warned that the attack was likely a war crime in which U.S. politicians may be complicit.

Numerous members of Congress took to social media to condemn Iran after Israel’s strikes on residential buildings and nuclear sites on Friday, which Iranian media reports killed nearly 80 people and injured at least 300 others. Lawmakers posted phrases like “pray for Israel,” characterizing Israel as a victim even as it launched unprompted strikes with no evidence of Iran imminently preparing to strike Israel.

“Game on. Pray for Israel,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), one of Congress’s most enthusiastic backers of war with Iran. He said that the U.S. should “have an overwhelming response” if Iran were to attack American interests in the Middle East, including destroying all of Iran’s oil infrastructure and personnel.

Republican leaders uniformly backed the strikes. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (South Dakota) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (Louisiana) blamed the strikes on Iran, referencing Israel’s dubious claim that the strikes were “preemptive.” “Israel decided it needed to take action to defend itself. They were clearly within their right to do so,” said Johnson.

“Iran will face grave consequences if it responds by unjustifiably targeting U.S. interests,” Johnson went on, neglecting to mention that numerous U.S. leaders have stoked war with Iran for decades, that the U.S. is Israel’s primary foreign military sponsor, and that President Donald Trump has threatened Iran in response to the attacks.

Democratic leaders were relatively mum on Friday morning as Trump praised the attacks. Late in an MSNBC interview on Thursday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also vilified Iran and its nuclear capabilities — something that many commentators noted on social media has been used as a war mongering talking point for decades now — and criticized Trump for failing to fulfill his supposed promises of peace on the campaign trail.

Meanwhile, numerous Democrats, including some of the most fervent Zionists in Congress, were quick to come to Israel’s defense and even called for the U.S. to openly step into the fray.

“Make no mistake: Israel is not the aggressor. It is defending itself against an existential threat that long predates the present preemptive strike,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-New York), outright echoing Israel’s wording. “The true aggressor is the Islamic Republic and its empire of terror — an empire stained with the blood of innocent Israelis.”

UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter Terrorism Ben Saul, who is also a professor of international law at the University of Sydney, said in his academic capacity that the strikes were a prohibited use of force under the UN charter and likely a war crime.

“Israel’s strikes on Iran are a prohibited use of force under article 2(4) of the UN Charter, an armed attack under article 51 giving Iran a right of self-defence and likely an international crime of aggression by Israeli leaders,” Saul wrote on social media. Saul is referring, respectively, to the prohibition of the use of threat or force in international conflict under international law, and to the right of a nation, in this case Iran’s, to defend itself against armed attacks.

This means that it’s possible that lawmakers are not only praising a strike that may have constituted a war crime, but also condemning Iran for any future attacks that may be performed in self-defense.

“The praise from many members of Congress for Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran reflects just how broken our foreign policy debate has become,” Sina Toossi, senior fellow for the Center for International Policy, told Truthout in a statement.

“Rather than urging restraint or pushing for de-escalation, many in Congress are cheering actions that risk dragging the U.S. into another disastrous Middle East war,” Toossi went on. “At a time when American power is already overstretched — from Ukraine to the Indo-Pacific — and we have far more pressing problems at home, blindly backing escalation in Iran serves neither our values nor our strategic interests. It’s a dangerous moral and geopolitical failure.”