From Iraq to Iran, why does the US 'preemptive' strike doctrine sound hollow again?

As explosions rang through Iran’s capital Tehran, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz chose a specific word to describe what had just begun. 

Not an “offensive”, an “invasion”, or even a “war”, but a “preemptive strike”, a term carrying legal and political weight far beyond the battlefield.

The same language, used by Washington more than twenty years ago, paved the way for one of the costliest foreign policy failures of the modern era - the Iraq war, launched on the justification later shown to be false.

In 2002, the Bush administration formalised the idea of preemptive strikes into official US national security policy and used it to justify invading Iraq over weapons of mass destruction that, as post-war investigations confirmed, did not exist.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians lost their lives in the subsequent war. 

Now, with US and Israeli forces striking Iranian government buildings, military sites, and the residences of senior officials, as well as President Trump’s declaration that Iran's "hour of freedom is at hand", that same doctrine appears to be making a comeback. 

This is a declaration of war and nothing less, according to Klaus Jurgens, political analyst and communications strategist.

“Iran was in the middle of nuclear talks and had given no indication it was planning to attack Israel. There was no imminent threat, which makes the 'preemptive' label a fiction,” Jurgens tells TRT World.

“And the strikes themselves are illegal under international law," he adds.

About an hour after the US strikes hit Tehran, President Donald Trump urged Iranians to stay indoors, warning that further bombardment was imminent and implying that once the fighting ended, the country’s political future would be in their hands. 

Yet under international law, preemptive war has a precise meaning and does not extend to pursuing government change.

It is a narrowly defined exception to the prohibition on the use of force, permitted only when a threat is imminent. In 2003, that threshold was widely judged not to have been met. In 2026, the evidence suggests it has not been met again.

What 'preemptive' actually means

Under Article 51 of the UN Charter, the right to self-defence applies only to situations involving an imminent armed attack. 

The keyword here is imminent: a credible, time-sensitive threat that leaves no room for diplomacy or deterrence. 

The 2002 Bush National Security Strategy sought to broaden this standard, asserting the right to strike before threats had fully materialised, a position widely disputed under international law.  

Today, President Trump’s rhetoric, framing military action alongside calls for political change in Iran, reflects the language of government change rather than self-defence. 

This comes despite Iran having been engaged in negotiations days before the strike, with reports suggesting willingness to curb uranium stockpiling, even as Washington maintained demands for “zero enrichment” from Iran. 

“This time, Netanyahu's war machine might get stuck as murdering innocent civilians in Palestine is one thing, getting into war with the entire Middle East is another,” Jurgens says.

"Israel, as of today, is a party to an illegal war. And with US backing now confirmed, the question is how far this spreads. The entire Middle East could become a tinderbox,” he adds.

“It is a miscalculation that could become Israel's endgame," Jurgens says.

Iraq 2003, the 'preemptive' fraud

The US’s justification for war on Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and was ready to use them.

In February 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell presented what the administration described as a conclusive case to the UN Security Council, including satellite images, intercepts, and assertions of mobile bioweapons laboratories and uranium purchases from Niger.

It later emerged that the presentation was built on faulty and, in some cases, fabricated intelligence. The 2004 Iraq Survey Group found no active WMD programmes.

The cost of that fiction was measured in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian lives and a region destabilised for a generation.

The parallels with today are difficult to ignore. 

"Trump's readiness for diplomacy was fiction, it is definitely not a fact. These strikes were planned weeks ago,” Jurgens says.

“The FCDO put out a travel alert late last night, 'heightened risk of regional tension,' advising British nationals to stay away from military areas and get their documents in order.”

“You don't need to be an intelligence analyst to know what that means. Something was coming. By morning, we had our answer," he says.

“When will the US and Israel finally realise they do not have the right to start WW3?”

Iran possesses sophisticated air defences, regional proxies, and strategic support from Russia and China. 

The nuclear issue falls short of the legal threshold for a preemptive strike, analysts say.

US and Israeli forces had already targeted Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025, with Trump declaring them “completely and totally obliterated.” 

That was meant to end the matter.

Eight months later, Tehran is under fire again.