OK if I come to your car, declare you’re my enemy, and tell you to get out before I toss a Molotov at you, does that mean I can’t be tried for murder later if you refuse?
This was a sneak attack outside of an established war zone, for an illegal war, so don’t try to conflate this as an attack on America’s enemies. The USA made them their enemies themselves.
They were in international waters. This was literally a war crime according to international law. Even the killing of the Supreme leader was against international law.
His daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren were civilians.
Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime.
Even if they were not targeted directly, an attack is illegal if:
it fails to minimize civilian harm, or
the civilian casualties are disproportionate to the military advantage
I don't believe you can minimize civilian damage more than that, if a target is always among civilians.
You can only push so much, like the pager attack was probably the most minimizing one, but obviously and unfortunately civilians still got caught.
For the international law part, interesting debate i think, where the state acts in self-defense if it has sustained an “armed attack” by its adversary;. Obviously this is very broad, but i think you can easily argue the last 40 year of fire exchanges as a continued armed attack.
This was a sneak attack outside of an established war zone, for an illegal war, so don’t try to conflate this as an attack on America’s enemies. The USA made them their enemies themselves.