Robert Fico ordered a halt to emergency electricity supplies to Ukraine, although the state-run SEPS pretends to be independent. Ukraine is not even in such need anymore, since it is warmer. How do you feel about this step by which Robert Fico made a shame in Europe?
Even if the weather is better, the 18 percent of emergency power is still important for Ukraine. However, I consider Fico’s decision to be erroneous and difficult to explain. The reputational damage to Slovakia is enormous. This was also confirmed to me at a recent online workshop with people from the Kyiv think tank; they asked why this happened. Robert Fico has shown again that he cannot adequately evaluate the situation. Fico apparently abused this topic to play his anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian card, although it does not help Smer’s preferences in any way.
The Middle East and the right to defense
Let’s move on to the US and Israeli attack on Iran. Do you consider this intervention legitimate?
I’ll start with my own experience. In 2009, I took part in a three-day briefing in Jerusalem organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel. There were about 50 representatives of the academic community and journalists, and the main topic was Iran. I have heard from experts in the intelligence, military and political communities, and they have convinced me that Israel will never allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons and their delivery systems.
As for legitimacy – this is not the beginning of the conflict. Since 1979, Iran has had a state doctrine of the liquidation of the Jewish state. That is their official policy. I’m asking how international law has protected Israel from Iran colonizing the Middle East for almost 50 years to attack Israel? Thousands of Israeli victims are responsible for this regime – Hamas, Hezbollah, endless wars and now the Houthis.
The question is how there can still be a state in the UN that officially declares that it wants to destroy another state.
We are watching the firefights, rockets flew last year as well. It is clear that Iran has its so-called proxy actors through which it attacks.
And he is not punished for it. There is no world policeman to punish Iran for attacking Israel through Hezbollah, for example. We live in a Hobbesian world. Israel has lived in it since its foundation. No international organization, norms of international law or alliances give Israel a hundred percent guarantee that it will survive. In this situation, any preemptive attack or response against a regime that wants to destroy you is legitimate.
It has been codified in them since 1979. What should Israel do when it has the opportunity to weaken this regime? Together with America, they already weakened him in this war. Some analysts say that this war is in the strategic interest of the US, others that it is in the interest of Israel. Those interests overlap. Israel put all its potential into it.
You admit that Iran has been weakened. Although Iran promised to destroy Israel, it did not actually destroy it. On the contrary, the stronger Israel together with the super-powerful United States attacked the weakened Iran.
Yes, on a weakened Iran, but that is a terrorist regime that cannot be negotiated with. Similar to Russia.
Based on international law, however, you cannot just bomb someone because you think their regime is terrorist.
How did the UN and international law help Israel against Hamas? He attacked when he wanted. Since 2023, it has fired 25,000 rockets at Israel. Hezbollah repeatedly started wars. How is Israel supposed to defend itself when it knows that the head of this octopus is in Iran?
Israel first weakened this regime, which is dangerous not only for it, but also for the West, the USA and us. There is no guarantee that if the regime survives, it will not begin to recover its potential. It is natural that if someone wants to cut you, you will not wait for him to sharpen his knife, but you will take the knife from him. Even our country already lives in a Hobbesian world. Alliances are important, but we see where the US is moving – Donald Trump has decided to be a bulldozer. Israel cannot afford to wait and rely on someone to let it live. If the current Iranian regime had nuclear weapons, it would undoubtedly use them against Israel.
But we were really far from that, even after their nuclear facilities were damaged in the previous bombing.
What does far mean? This possibility must be ruled out one hundred percent. This regime has been clearly defined since 1979. The United States did not enter it at the insistence of Israel, which I think is a misinterpretation. John Bolton said on Fox News that it’s not – it’s more about working with Republican voters who are set on strong solutions. Israel will benefit from this, but it is the result of its own decision and use of its own potential. Israel spends incredible resources on defense, the country would develop even more successfully if it did not have to deal with these threats.
We understand that Israel is surrounded by states that have attacked it in the past. But the current situation is that Israel and the US, in violation of international law – which allows attack only in the case of a proven imminent threat – attacked Iran. That immediate threat was now absent. Although Iran can declare for 50 years that it will destroy Israel, it did not have missiles aimed at it or an army on the border.
Because those rockets have already been partially destroyed. I will say it differently. The Iranian regime is responsible for 30,000 to 60,000 people killed. You say that aggression is illegal. Let’s leave it to the organizations to judge whether the norms of international law have been violated.
But look at the Iranian diaspora around the world. They demonstrate and thank Israel and the US for liberating their country from this regime. Who would be able to look into the eyes of the families of the victims of those incredible atrocities? The Iranian people welcome the weakening and removal of this regime. Formally, perhaps experts like Natasha Hausdorf, an excellent lawyer from Great Britain, will say that Israel had the right to do so. We, the democratic states of the EU and NATO, tried to observe international law against someone who does not observe anything at all. However, Israel is not in this position. It must take into account the decisions of the UN, which have been taken against it in one year in greater numbers than against all other countries combined.
Those declarations didn’t come just like that, it was a reaction to what Israel was doing in Gaza. You yourself said that it was apparently not formally in accordance with international law. Where then is the difference between Russia’s aggression against Ukraine – where we agree that it was a violation of law – and this case? Can we condemn aggression in one case and basically legitimize it in the other?
That comparison doesn’t fit. Ukraine did not do to Russia what Iran through its proxy actors did to Israel. Ukraine did not try to eliminate Russia. It was a peaceful state that did not threaten Russia in any way. On the contrary, the current Russian leadership considers Ukraine to be a non-existent nation. Comparing it to Israel’s defensive war, which has been going on since 1979, is wrong.
Where was the Lebanese government when Hezbollah, which has existed since 1982, attacked? The Lebanese government only condemned Israel for bombing Beirut. Israel does not bomb civilians, but military and terrorist targets.
There are also civilian victims in Iran, the school mentioned. I’m not saying that someone hit it on purpose, things like that happen in wars. This is precisely why wars should not be fought.
War as such, context aside, is a crime. Why do people kill each other? But we live in the real world, where there are rogue states with cannibalistic regimes and democratic states that want to live peacefully. Israel is the only democracy in the region. The Arab states finally understood that it is better for them to maintain normal relations with Israel, which was also confirmed by the Abrahamic Agreements, the positions of Jordan and Egypt. But then came Iran, which didn’t like it.
Look at Yemen. About 370,000 people died there in the civil war.
Iran supports the Houthis as rebels there.
How did Iran pay for it? How has international law helped Yemenis?
Even if it didn’t help them, doesn’t that mean that the democratic countries – as we consider Israel and the USA – should be the ones that respect international law?
My answer is this: if one hundred percent of countries obeyed international law, everyone would have to obey it. But as long as we have regimes that oppress their own nation and threaten another state with liquidation, then in that case the right to defense using military methods is legitimate.
Donald Trump is a bulldozer who only cares about how to achieve US interests. We tried to follow the rules, but it didn’t work. In the confrontation between a decent person and a scoundrel, the scoundrel often wins, because a decent person treats him decently, but a scoundrel treats everyone scoundrelly.
Isn’t that the road to hell? If I too have to become a villain just because someone else is a criminal? Should I kill him as a precaution?
That’s a slightly different situation. If you know a bad guy is going to kill you, you know the police won’t protect you, and he’s already standing outside your door with an ax in hand, what do you do?
However, it doesn’t quite fit here, because Iran was not really going to attack at that moment.
But Iran was already attacking Israel. He surrounded it with his proxy allies and continuously killed the Israelis. He created unbearable conditions for that state. Israel cannot afford to lose the war because it would mean a second holocaust for the Jewish state. You put me in the position of supporting the violation of the law, but I ask: why does Israel always have to do it?
I hope that this regime in Iran will fall and Iran will join the world community. Then you will see that Israel will be his greatest friend. If that regime falls, there will be no need for such steps to save the state.
Is Iran’s involvement in the international community under a better regime realistic? What are you waiting for in Iran? A civil war with millions of victims like in Iraq?
I can’t predict that. But thousands of protesting Iranians have died there in recent weeks. The entire diaspora, representatives of various organizations and people inside the country asked the US to intervene. The United States did not intervene then.
To be clear, I am not a supporter of Donald Trump. For example, Donald Trump is a very problematic figure for Ukraine. Of course, it can be the other way around for Israel, as it has its own preferences. Ultimately, however, the United States decided to go to war. How will it turn out? I do not have access to their strategic considerations or to internal documents. The very fact that this regime will cease to exist can create a space for normal political forces – and they don’t have to be liberal-democratic right away, they can be conservatives or the army.
But the experience is like this – look at Venezuela, for example. I think the United States should do more to transform or eliminate such a regime. We see that today Maduro is no longer in power and many political prisoners have been released, although the process is not yet fully closed. This means that transformation can be slow and complex. Even in Iran it can take years. Nevertheless, a normal state can gradually be created, which will be able to function in international cooperation and will not consider one of its potential partners as an enemy that needs to be eliminated.
How can Iran be a member of the UN, which has peaceful coexistence in its constitution, and behave like this at the same time. I believe that regime will fall soon and it will no longer be an Islamic republic. We see it in ordinary citizens, women are already walking around without the hijab, which has become a symbol of resistance.
But it’s been quite a long time.
Of course, it would be ideal if the change came from within, from the residents themselves. They tried a few weeks ago, but the result was thousands of dead. If the regime cannot be removed from within, the military weakening of its repressive capacity is a positive development. It will certainly not be easy, there will be instability, but it is a chance to return to normal international cooperation.
