Terrorism Counterterrorism
Israel’s Actions in Syria and the Outer Limits of Self-Defence
Following the fall of the al-Assad regime in Syria, Israel carried out a series of airstrikes across Syria targeting military facilities, weapons and ammunition depots, defence systems, and Syrian naval and aircraft fleets. The targets reportedly housed “chemical...
Defeat: Meanings, Consequences, Law, and Doctrine
Victory. Defeat. Two seemingly straightforward words that capture the big-picture objectives and results of war. As many current and recent conflicts over the past few decades demonstrate, however, the reality is anything but straightforward. For example, as media...
United States v. Najibullah Symposium – Bad Apples are Still Apples
Editors’ note: This post is part of a two-post symposium on a pretrial hearing in the case United States v. Najibullah. An introductory post by Professor Sean Watts provides background on the case and the hearing. Earlier this year, I testified as a defense expert...
Killing Nasrallah and the Law of Armed Conflict
Last Friday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted air strikes against a Hezbollah command and control bunker in Beirut’s Dahiyeh suburbs, which was located under an apartment complex. The attack, which followed IDF warnings for civilians to evacuate the area,...
ISIS Detentions in Syria and the Responsibility of Supporting States
While the world’s attention is focused on the hostilities in Gaza and Ukraine, the conflict against ISIS in Syria and Iraq continues. Although out of the headlines, coalition forces led by the United States continue to work with local partner forces to achieve the...
The “Total Defeat” of Hamas and the End of NIAC
Since the onset of the hostilities in Gaza that began on October 7, 2023, Israel has consistently identified the “complete destruction” of the “military and governmental capabilities” of Hamas as one of its principal war aims. If Israel were to achieve that objective,...
Targeting Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah’s Fuad Shukr
On Wednesday morning, Israel killed the Chief of Hamas’s Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, while he was in Tehran to attend the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. To do so, it reportedly used a bomb that had been smuggled two months earlier into the...
Palestine’s Quest for Full United Nations Membership
Amidst the ongoing war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, the United States vetoed Palestine’s latest bid for full acceptance as a member State of the United Nations (UN). In the view of the United States, the only way for a stable future between Israel and Palestine...
MARWAN 1: How U.S. Central Command Transferred Seized Iranian Ammunition to Ukraine
On December 1, 2022, the USS Lewis B. Puller, an expeditionary mobile base ship assigned to the U.S. 5th Fleet and U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, intercepted a fishing trawler, the Marwan 1 (Marwan), a flagless vessel, in the Gulf of Oman. A security team from the...
Israel-Hamas 2024 Symposium – Israel’s Declaration of War on Hamas: A Modern Invocation of Recognized Belligerency?
Hours after Hamas launched a horrific and unprecedently large-scale terrorist assault on Israel, the Israeli Security Cabinet invoked, for the first time in Israel’s history, Article 40(a) of its Basic Law: The Government. Israel’s invocation of Article 40(a) was...
The Law of Self-Defense and the U.S. and UK Strikes against the Houthis
The Houthis are an Iran-aligned armed group that controls large swathes of territory in northern Yemen. Since 19 November 2023, and to support Hamas during its ongoing armed conflict with Israel, the Houthis have launched attacks against vessels transiting through the...
International Law, Political Will, and Regulation of the Foreign-Fighter Phenomenon
Editor’s Note: This post is based on an article, “Regulating the Foreign-Fighter Phenomenon” published in the Virginia Journal of International Law, available here. Across at least three centuries, foreign fighters—individuals who voluntarily depart their countries of...
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