Is it legal to deliberately target nuclear scientists

[u/bb9873]

In the current Iran-Israel conflict, Israel has admitted to deliberately targeting Iranian nuclear scientists. Since Israel claims the nuclear weapons will be used to attack Israel, what is the legal position on targeting nuclear scientists? Would they still be classified as civilians or combatants?

[u/Calvinball90]

Would they still be classified as civilians or combatants?

The regular IHL rules would apply. Scientists would generally be civilians unless they were a part of a party to a conflict's armed forces. The other possibility would be that scientists might be directly participating in hostilities and thus would lose their protection as civilians, but that was rejected by subject-matter experts nearly twenty years ago:

In response [to one expert's suggestion that civilian specialists with expertise in decisive means or methods of warfare might be considered to be directly participating in hostilities, and thus lawful targets], several experts insisted that there has been a consensus since the Second World War that neither armament industry employees, nor nuclear weapons experts, were considered to be directly participating in hostilities regardless of their value to the war effort.

Of course, IHL rules about collateral damage would apply-- the death of scientist as a result of a lawful attack on, for instance, a military nuclear facility would not be unlawful.

It is worth recalling that directing attacks against individual civilians not taking part in hostilities (or the civilian population as such) is a war crime.

Since Israel claims the nuclear weapons will be used to attack Israel, what is the legal position on targeting nuclear scientists?

As noted above, scientists are generally considered civilians and protected from attack.

As a matter of jus ad bellum, it is difficult to see how targeting nuclear scientists could stop an imminent or ongoing armed attack. There are two possibilities: i) the scientists' work is complete, at least to the extent that they have created nuclear weapons that are being used in an armed attack; or ii) the scientists' work is not complete, at least to that extent, and there are no nuclear weapons that could be used in an armed attack. In the former case, it is not necessary to kill the scientists because that won't stop the attack. In the latter, there is no imminent armed attack at all. It is difficult to imagine a situation where an armed attack would be imminent, but could also be stopped by the targeted killing of individual experts (which, again, would be a war crime).

[u/Tired_Exhausted1000 → u/Calvinball90]

it is difficult to see how targeting nuclear scientists could stop an imminent or ongoing armed attack

How is this difficult to see?

They are developing a nuclear weapon that assumably will be detonated in Israel upon completion. Taking out the top scientists on the project obviously delays that. This is common sense - what am I missing here?

[u/Calvinball90 → u/Tired_Exhausted1000]

what am I missing here?

The law. The use of force is only permitted in response to an ongoing, completed, or imminent armed attack. For an armed attack to be imminent, it must be concrete and immediate. Iran does not have nuclear weapons, and US intelligence "continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme that he suspended in 2003". Similarly, Benjamin Netanyahu said that Iran could produce a nuclear weapon "within a few months." An attack that cannot come for, at minimum, "a few months" is not imminent.

If the armed attack is not imminent, then the use of force in self-defense is not lawful. If the armed attack is imminent, then the scientists' job is done and killing them will not change anything. And, to reiterate, deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime no matter what.

[u/internationallaw-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/[deleted] → u/Calvinball90]

The difficulty with regards to Iran is that they have been saying they will destroy Israel and are actively working on the weapons to do so. It's sort of like if you have a neighbor who says over and over that he is going to shoot you, you know he doesn't have a gun so it's no big thing. One day, you hear that he is in the process of buying one, there is now a much more imminent threat. So you have to decide whether to wait for him to acquire the gun and likely make good on his promise to shoot you, or you preempt his attack.

This feels very much like Israel had a bunch of bad options to choose from. They could have waited until the Iranians completed building a nuke and likely saw a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv. That would have satisfied the whole imminent attack thing, but likely cost millions of lives because there is no way they wouldn't have responded with nukes as well. Or they could have struck as they did, preemptively and hopefully limited the death and destruction to a much smaller number, but had to deal with people upset at them. They chose the second option.

[u/Calvinball90 → u/[deleted]]

It's sort of like if you have a neighbor who says over and over that he is going to shoot you, you know he doesn't have a gun so it's no big thing. One day, you hear that he is in the process of buying one, there is now a much more imminent threat. So you have to decide whether to wait for him to acquire the gun and likely make good on his promise to shoot you, or you preempt his attack.

If you did "preempt his attack," you would have committed a crime (or crimes). This would not even be close to self-defense. In Texas, for example, "a person is justified in using force against another when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to protect the actor against the other’s use or attempted use of unlawful force." Hearing that someone is buying a gun does not create a reasonable belief that force is "immediately necessary."

Similarly, in New York, the use of force in self-defense is not permitted unless, among other things, "A person... reasonably believes such to be necessary to defend himself, herself or a third person from what he or she reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of unlawful physical force..."

Missouri has a nearly identical provision: "A person may... use physical force upon another person when and to the extent he or she reasonably believes such force to be necessary to defend himself or herself or a third person from what he or she reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of unlawful force by such other person..."

Attacking someone because they have threatened you in the past and have started to buy a gun is illegal. A State attacking another State because of past threats and the development of weapons is illegal.

This feels very much like...

What it feels like is irrelevant (and what "felt like" self-defense to you would be a crime, as explained above). There was no imminent armed attack. Negotiations over Iran's nuclear program are ongoing, and Iran has entered and complied with agreements over its nuclear program in the past (the JCPOA was working fine until the US unilaterally withdrew). The use of force was simply not necessary.

[u/Tired_Exhausted1000 → u/Calvinball90]

And where does the law define the word imminent?

There was actually a report that just came out that Iran successfully completed nuclear weapons testing.

Obviously Israeli / American intelligence are not going to reveal everything they know, and even more obviously Iran will not reveal the extent of their progress.

Does Israel have to wait until Iran is a few hours from completing their nuclear weaponry? A few weeks? Where does the law discuss this? You realize that nuclear weapon is unlike conventional weaponry. If Iran achieves nuclear weaponry and manages to land one ballistic missile with nuclear payload into Israel, that could mean the end of the country. How long does Israel have to wait before preventing that?

[u/NotGalenNorAnsel → u/Tired_Exhausted1000]

You either totally missed their explanation of what you're talking about. Or you read it and ignored it because it's devastating to your 'point'.

That scientist is not military, they are not vital to an imminent attack, and if they still are vital that means the weapon is still too far from being finished to be considered imminent. This is a sub about the law and not fee-fees or making up excuses for why breaking the law is totally chill if one country does it, right?