International Law

CFR experts discuss the implications of the death of Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, new International Criminal Court charges against Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leadership, and other updates from the Middle East. ROBBINS: Thanks so much, Will. And welcome, everybody. As Will said, this is on the record. I’m Carla Anne Robbins. I’m a senior fellow here at the Council. And I’m co-host the Council’s The World Next Week podcast.   We’re joined today by three Council experts and friends of mine. They’re well known to everyone, so I’m just going to give a very brief introduction.  Steven Cook is in the Eni—I can never do this one, Steven—the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and African Studies. And he’s an expert in Arab and Turkish politics and U.S. Middle East policy. He’s also a columnist at Foreign Policy magazine. And his next book is The End of Ambition: America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East.   David Scheffer is a senior fellow with a focus on international law and international criminal justice. And among his many roles during the Clinton administration, he was the first-ever U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes issues and led the U.S. delegation to the U.N. talks establishing the ICC, and signed the Rome Statute of the ICC on behalf of the United States on December 31, 2000, before the George W. Bush administration pulled out. He also negotiated the creation of five war crimes tribunals.   And Ray Takeyh is the Hasib J. Sabbagh senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council. His area of specialization are Iran and the modern Middle East. Prior to joining CFR, he has served as a senior advisor on Iran at the State Department, a fellow at Yale University, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Middle East Center at University of California, Berkeley—my alma mater. And is most recently the author of The Last Shah: America, Iran in the Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty.  Steven, Ray, David, and I will have a discussion for about twenty minutes and then open things up for your questions. So, Ray, can we start—(background noise)—who’s talking to me? So, Ray, can we start with you? How does the death of Iran’s president in this helicopter crash change the power structure in Iran? Not only was he the president, the betting was he was going to replace the ayatollah, supreme leader.   TAKEYH: Well, this certainly was a succession crisis that the regime did not anticipate. And it creates a measure of paralysis in how it works. Ebrahim Raisi was a fairly lackluster president. He lacked the imagination and the skill for that job. But he was Ali Khamenei’s ideal president because he was so in line with him with everything that he said, and so forth.   Whether he was suitable successor to the current leader I’m not entirely sure, because he lacked that sort of skill and cunning that you need for that job. But he was—certainly would have been part of the structure that would appoint the new supreme leader. So in that particular sense, that particular structure—which is fairly opaque—has to be reconsidered anew, and perhaps a new member added to the commission that was already investigating that possibility and vetting various candidates. He could very well have come up to that job, given the fact that the Islamic Republic is sort of a grading on a grade inflation basis these days.   In terms of the—and, obviously, they have to have a new president. That opens up the possibility of election within fifty days. That opens up a lot of old wounds about who’s going to allowed to be run, who’s not going to run, and who will actually be anointed to become the next president. So it will create some sort of a division within the elite once more. Those divisions, of course, have always been there, as the Islamic Republic has been so relentlessly purged of the old establishment figures in the past few years. So, once again, you begin to see those wounds be aggravated.   And then the decision will be about who should be the next president and whether you go for the younger generation that are waiting for his turn, or some of the more seasoned political figures. My guess is, it’s probably going to be one of the members of the younger generation who are a dominant faction in the parliament, and so forth. In terms of Iran’s foreign policy, it doesn’t really affect it that much. Raisi rarely, essentially, said anything about matters of international relations other than supporting whatever the regime was doing at the time. He doesn’t—he didn’t seem to take initiative, foreign policy was not an area where he was active, like his predecessor President Rouhani.   In terms of the management economy, the economy is cratering at high inflation, unemployment rates, and his policies have largely been criticized on that front. And, as I said, on the security issues he would usually be an affirmative voice for what was happening, as opposed to initiate his own—his own ideas, and so forth. So there’ll be some changes, but those changes are going to be particularly in the realm of succession about who is to succeed and what is a process of succession.  And also it will be impacted, in terms of the country has to have another election in fifty days. It can potentially go beyond that. And that will create some degree of political space where you begin to see all disagreement surface and the possibility of some degree of disquiet at home, given the fact that the Iranian people are going to be summoned to certify another choice for president that they had very little to do with. That may create some degree of popular agitation. And that’s what the regime has to be very concerned about.   This is only the second time the Islamic Republic has had to deal with a president who was killed before his term expired. The first time, ironically enough, was in 1981-1982, when Ali Khamenei rose to the office of presidency, because his predecessor was blown away by a terrorist. So they haven’t had that kind of experience for a long time. And now they have to deal with this issue, at a time when they’re dealing with so many other issues whether it’s in the region or at home. And this was a complication that the system certainly didn’t need.   ROBBINS: So, just really quickly, were you surprised that they so quickly attributed to mechanical failure and didn’t go for the conspiracy theory? Maybe that the Israelis were behind it, perhaps?  TAKEYH: Well, the conspiracy theories are going to be pervasive throughout the country anyways. The official explanation is never accepted. So they’re going to be attributing it to Israelis, to the Americans. They’re going to be attributing to internal political factions, this and that. So the official explanation is unlikely to be accepted, because it appears that in Iran today nobody dies of natural causes or accidents. So some conspiracy theories will find their way into the political atmosphere in that country, irrespective of the—of the official explanation. But I think the official explanation is not only correct, but also does not invite for the confrontation at this time with Israelis.  ROBBINS: I mean, I think that’s mainly why I was asking it. It seemed almost, dare we say, a responsible response on their part.  TAKEYH: Right. It would be very difficult for Israelis to build that mountain so quickly anyways. But so I think incompetence is usually the way to go on these issues. These helicopters were, I believe, Bell helicopters that the shah was building in Isfahan in 1978-79. And Javad Zarif has actually complained about the fact that the sanctions on the aviation industry has caused these mechanical failures. So for those who want to see if the sanctions work, well, they seem to have worked in this case, in an indirect way. But, you know, the existing explanation seems sufficient for their purposes at the moment.  ROBBINS: Thanks. David, the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan said today that he had requested warrants for prosecution for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader within Gaza, for Mohammed Deif, Hamas’ military leader, for Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ Qatar-based political leader. What does that mean, a request? What comes next? And can you talk a little bit about the crimes? President Biden, I think, said all of this was outrageous. Is this it? Is this an indictment? And what do we take away from this?  SCHEFFER: Well, thanks, Carla. The procedure under the International Criminal Court is that the prosecutor must request an arrest warrant, which we would consider to be an indictment. And that has to be then approved by a three-judge panel on what’s called the Pre-Trial Chamber of judges. What’s a little unusual—and that can take weeks, it can take months. There’s varied practice before the ICC as to how quickly these judges actually arrive at these determinations. It would not surprise me whatsoever if the judges take a few months. It also would be a little surprising to me if perhaps they did not reach decision before their summer break in August. I would think they’d sort of pin that as an objective, to try to reach a decision before the August break at the court. But it certainly—unless, you know, I’m shocked—unless it’s an immediate decision by the judges, but I somewhat doubt that.   I am a little surprised that the prosecutor went public with this request to the judges. That’s somewhat unprecedented at the ICC. Typically, the prosecutor keeps this in house, gets the judicial decision, and then there’s the public announcement of the arrest warrant. In part because you don’t want the targeted individuals to flee prematurely before the arrest warrant is actually confirmed by the judges. So I think maybe an interesting question for the media with the court would be perhaps to try to ask that of the prosecutor’s office. Why is there a public announcement before the judges have actually decided?  In terms—and, by the way, nonetheless, this does not surprise me as an intensive watcher of the court. We know that this has been under investigation since late October, early November. Obviously, at some point there are going to be arrest warrants issued, given the scale of the alleged criminal conduct in the Israel-Hamas war—whether it be on the Hamas side or the Israeli side. I mean, it’s not going to be indefinitely no arrest warrants. Of course there are going to be warrants at some point. I was a little surprised at how quickly this came, but so be it.   In terms of the crimes that are actually in the arrest warrants, the arrest warrants against the Hamas individuals focus very, very much on sort of the raw crimes of war crimes and crimes against humanity—extermination, murder, sexual violence, rape, torture, holding of hostages, et cetera, cruel treatment. These are all signatures of what we’ve been reading about in terms of the Hamas actions.   When it comes to the Israeli—the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant on the Israeli side, interestingly the warrants focus pretty exclusively on the crime of starvation and the consequences of starvation with the civilian population. The prosecutor pointedly did not put any charges in that arrest warrant dealing with the bombing campaign in Gaza. And he actually says towards the end of his explanation, that remains under investigation. But this arrest warrant against Netanyahu and the other one against Gallant do not have the bombing campaign.   Now, I would also say that there are no genocide charges whatsoever in these arrest warrants. Both sides, you know, are—I mean, certainly, we know from the South Africa case in front of the world court that the charge of genocide is very central to that particular case, at the world court. And, of course, Israel could quite legitimately argue that the actions on October 7 were very genocidal in character, and that Hamas is demonstrating that genocidal intent. None of that is in these particular charges. Genocide is off the table, at least for the moment, in terms of these announcements.   And then, finally, I would just say that, from what I’ve seen this morning coming out of both Israel, Washington here, I would not have suggested that what has happened today is, quote/unquote, “outrageous.” I mean, it’s entirely predictable. No one should be surprised by this. But I would say that—you know, obviously, it would be fair to say that it’s very distressing to see these arrest warrants being applied for with respect to whatever side you want to express your distress on, particularly the Israeli side. But “outrageous” is sort of, if I may coin a term, you know, a bit over the top in terms of how one might describe this.   And then may I just finally say, Carla, very, very quickly, I think we should keep in mind how this could all play out in a negotiated settlement to the end of the war. There are lots of options that are now on the table because of what’s happened this morning that could play very critical roles in any negotiation to actually end this conflict. And there’s leverage put on the table now. And I can get into that if someone wants to question me about it.  ROBBINS: I’m sorry, can you just answer that really quickly? Which is, doesn’t this—if the court agrees with the indictments, I mean, the court doesn’t get to sit around the table and say we’re going to take the indictment off the table if you agree to a two-state solution.  SCHEFFER: No. No. No, no, of course, not.  ROBBINS: Doesn’t it mean that there’s less leverage there? Because he can’t go to 124 countries then, if he’s indicted.  SCHEFFER: No. No, that’s not the way it could work.   ROBBINS: OK.  SCHEFFER: It could work as follows, that the negotiators at the table—let’s say it’s—it’ll have to be Israel, it’ll have to be the Palestinians. I mean, at some point they have to talk to each other. And they can actually reach a couple of agreements.   One would be that, upon recognizing the state of Palestine—in other words, the end of the process would have to be a two-state settlement, of course, or solution. That when that occurs, then Israel and Palestine would enter into what we call an Article 98(2) non-surrender agreement, under the Rome Statute, whereby they would each agree not to surrender any suspects to the ICC which are in their custody. OK, for Israel and Palestine. Now, that would be a tough deal, because, you know, obviously, many would want to see the Hamas targets prosecuted someday. And then, of course, many on the other side would want to see the Israeli officials prosecuted. But that could be a deal cut in order to get to a two-state solution.   The other possibility—and I’ll stop with this—is that there could be an agreement among the permanent five of the Security Council as part of a two-state settlement or solution deal that the Security Council would vote under Article 16 of the Rome Statute to suspend all ICC investigations and prosecutions relating to the Israel-Hamas war for one year. And that would just then block the ICC from taking any further action. And then they—of course, they’d have to renew that each year, if it were to be perpetuated. I’m not advocating any of that. I’m just saying those are objective options that could be put on the table.  ROBBINS: Huh. That’s—thanks. Thank you, David, for that.   So, Steven, even before what happened with the ICC, it wasn’t—it was a pretty horrible, terrible, no-good week for Bibi Netanyahu. His War Cabinet was seen to be publicly unraveling. There was a resumption of street protests, which had been very quiet. Can you talk a little bit about what was going on before, and how this changes it or doesn’t?  COOK: Yeah. It has been not a very good period for Prime Minister Netanyahu. It obviously hasn’t been a good period for him since October 7. But, nevertheless, last week was particularly bad. And the trigger for this was the fact that the IDF was back engaged in pretty intensive fighting in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, a place that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared “pacified” in November.   And Gallant went public with his criticism of Netanyahu and his resistance to hammering out a day-after plan. And, also, he called upon the prime minister to say and declare that Israel has no intention of establishing settlements in the Gaza Strip. This came on the heels of a rather large protest of the settler right, which is seeking to resettle the Gaza Strip. Not an insignificant number of people and not an insignificant percentage of the Israeli public actually support the resettlement of the Gaza Strip. And Gallant, I think echoing the IDF high command which does not want to be the military administration in the Gaza Strip, was calling for, one, that declaration, as well as a day-after plan.  A couple of days later, Benny Gantz—the other member of the War Cabinet, in addition to Netanyahu—came out and said, basically, he needs a day-after plan. And he needs it by June 8, otherwise he’s going to leave the government. Netanyahu, obviously, responded and said: Our first goal is the destruction of Hamas. If Gantz leaves the government—the War Cabinet, it doesn’t really matter in terms—and the government—it doesn’t really matter, because Netanyahu’s coalition would still command sixty-four seats in the Knesset.   And the reason why Netanyahu is unwilling to comply with the demands from his defense minister, as well as his—other members of the War Cabinet, as well as the United States, is that if he spells out day-after plan that does not include settlement in the Gaza Strip, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who together control fourteen seats in the Knesset, will bolt from the government, thereby bringing the government down. And then the question of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s legal jeopardy once again emerges.   So that is where things stood before this statement from the ICC prosecutor. I’ll leave it to David and others to figure out why he went outside the norm to declare that he was seeking these warrants. I’m not an expert in that area. But the Israeli response has been to criticize, obviously, the ICC for putting the prime minister of Israel and the defense minister of Israel—a country that still has a functioning judiciary—on the same plane as the terrorists of Hamas.   And in despite the fact that Netanyahu has been at loggerheads with Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, both Lapid and Gantz have come out with scathing criticism of the ICC decision. So it may actually end up helping Netanyahu, this closing of the ranks, the perception—you know, David is quite right. You know, nothing has actually been decided here. But in Israeli political discourse, as well as American political discourse, a lot has been decided. And we know that we live in an era where narrative is the most important thing.   And so it may help Netanyahu with the Israeli public, who already feels besieged and isolated. The world is against them. Antisemitism is rife everywhere. And in may encourage the Israelis to ignore those kinds of warnings from the Biden administration, despite the president’s criticism of the ICC thing, to really go forward in a very big way in Gaza. Which I think they’re planning anyway, but then I think the outlook will be, well, we have nothing to lose anyway. No matter what we do we’ll be criticized or indicted or warrants will be sought for our arrest. And so we might as well, as Netanyahu said before the country on Israel’s independence day, if we have to go it alone, we will go it alone. We’re the only ones who know how to secure our country.  ROBBINS: With that, happy thought, I’d turn it over to our many participants.  Will, can you explain—remind people how to ask a question?  OPERATOR: (Gives queuing instructions.)  ROBBINS: Waiting for people to raise their hands. So as we do that, this could be, of course—we have an explanation in the chat about how to do this. So waiting for people to ask questions. We have reporters. Come on, you guys, ask questions. I’m a reporter. I’ll ask a question. So, Steven, just a little bit more on the—we seem to have—ah. Can you—is it Pouya Lavian? Can you identify yourself and ask your question?  Q: Hi. Good afternoon. This is Pouya Lavian from Wells Fargo. Thank you all for taking the time.   Question for Ray. Do you see any sort of change in attitude for support of proxies by the Iranian regime while they’re dealing with internal issues relate to succession? Or do you feel it’s going to be full speed ahead for what they’ve been doing, you know, to date?  TAKEYH: The proxy war strategy, the notion of axis of resistance, that is a consensus position within the state. Within the regime it’s a consensus position because it’s been so spectacularly successful. They have managed to have a multinational force that they can deploy with limited cost and has been very effective in various fronts. So I don’t see disruptions in that particular realm.   Now, in terms of their approach overall to the Israeli-Gaza conflict that is taking place, well, they have to kind of figure out what their next steps are, because their entire strategy was that they would inflame the Israeli boundaries, and they would inflame international opinion, and they would inflame the American opinion, and that would impose some restrictions on Israeli conduct of war. And that has happened. Israel has become a very isolated country internationally, as was indicated with these particular measures by the international court. It’s been increasingly division—a divisive issue within the American political system. But all of that has not led to restraints on Israel, per se. So where they go from here in terms of that strategy remains to be seen.  This is the first time that the axis of resistance strategy hasn’t worked as was intended to. And it even led to a confrontation between Iran and Israel that hadn’t happened in forty-five years and could have potentially seriously gotten out of hand. So that aspect of it has to be rethought and reconsidered, and maybe be more aggressive in terms of the rings of fire around Israel, or hopefully that somehow the international community will once again seek to impose some kind of a restraint on Israeli public. And maybe that is—that is going to happen. But it hasn’t happened thus far. But overall, in terms of using these proxies to achieve your strategic objectives, that is a position of consensus—at least within the governing elite.  ROBBINS: Steven, can you talk a little bit about the sort of regional reaction to this level of potential instability inside of inside of Iran?   COOK: Well, you know, clearly the Saudis are, you know, interested in maintaining that level of dialogue that they established with the March 2023 resumption of diplomatic relations. They’re very plain in saying that they believe that the Iranians have violated every aspect of their agreement, but that they do not—but they value the continued dialogue because they see it as a source of stability. The Emiratis view in a similar fashion and are seeking to gain some leverage with the Iranians by dint of investment in joint projects, as we’ve seen over the last couple of years or so. So there is obviously concern about instability and power struggles across the Gulf, because it would potentially impact them.   There’s obviously no love lost between the Iranian regime and these—and the leaders. Particularly unhappy about the axis of evil and the way in which Iran’s proxies have essentially been given license to spread instability around the region. And this could be yet another source of it. But there’s really—I don’t think, unlike the discourse in the United States about Iran in which there is an endless debate about moderates versus hardliners and so on and so forth, the Gulfies really don’t make those distinctions whatsoever. And I think it’s a more realistic view of Iran.   So whoever comes after Raisi will be, as Ray pointed, another affirmative voice in what the Gulf states believed to be is an aggressive foreign policy. The reason why they pulled back from a confrontation from it, is because they just don’t trust the United States would be with them. So they will continue to maintain the kind of dialogue they had to keep the Iranians away from at least undermining their stability and security.  ROBBINS: David, why do you think that there was an announcement about this request from the prosecutor? There are two ways of looking at it, as someone who is not an expert on the court at all. One was they’re trying to jam the judges. And the other one is that they see this as potentially so urgent and that they’re making a political statement, and that perhaps they can save some lives by pressuring the Israelis right now, or pressuring Hamas right now. And they want to get their political message, their deterrent message, out there as fast as possible.  SCHEFFER: Carla, those are precisely the two reasons that are in the back of my mind.   ROBBINS: Darn, I’m good.  SCHEFFER: (Laughs.) Yeah. You’re very good.   First, it’s to literally sort of put the judges on the spot. Which is unusual, because they don’t like being put on the spot like this. They’re going to be under pressure from both the Israeli and the Palestinian side before they reach a decision. There’ll be an enormous amount of lobbying—obviously, through the media, et cetera, and, you know, op-eds and whatever—to try to influence their decision. That’s why you don’t go public like this.  The other thing, of course, is the prosecutor deciding that the imperative of ending these alleged crimes is so important that he’s not going to wait for that multi-week, multi-month process before he—you know, he’s made many statements, or at least several of them, including all the way back to late October, warning parties, both sides—and in particular Israel—don’t overplay your hand. There’s still international humanitarian law that has to be complied with. No one’s questioning the right of self-defense or the just war theory. It’s the question of how you wage just war that is at issue here. And I noticed some of the Israeli comment this morning seems to think that there’s this big criticism of a just war, that somehow it’s not a just war. That is not the argument. It’s how you wage the just war that’s the argument.   Could I just pick up on one thing that Steven said, which I think is very important from the Israeli point of view? The prosecutor made it a point in his statement this morning to say, complementarity is the—is the supreme rule of the International Criminal Court. Namely, if it can be demonstrated that these issues are being dealt with at the domestic court level, then the ICC essentially backs off. That’s a central theme of the entire Rome Statute structure. What Israel could do at this point, given that it has a superb, you know, legal system, is, frankly, before these judges reach a decision, they could demonstrate that there are legitimate inquiries before the courts of some character—I mean, they’d have to figure that out—as to the compliance of their top leaders with international humanitarian law, particularly of the character identified in the arrest warrant which focuses on starvation. And that Israeli courts will take this on affirmatively, and with determination they will—they will investigate this.   Now, I know that’s tough politically. But I’m just saying that’s one way to actually—the judges could just say, well, we’re going to back off and wait until complementarity takes its course. This is exactly what happened for years between the court and the country of Colombia about the whole civil war between FARC and the Colombian forces, Colombia kept saying, back off ICC, we’re dealing with this domestically, we’re going to handle it. And ultimately, they did and the ICC definitively backed off. So it’s a tactic, but it has to be done very, very smartly in order to demonstrate that complementarity.  ROBBINS: Given the fact that—of, what, the Netanyahu government’s desire to basically dismantle the autonomy of the Supreme Court, you could imagine the relationship between the judiciary. I can’t imagine that happening. But, Steven, you know more about Israeli politics than I do. Can you imagine them doing that?   COOK: Well, they have not yet actually undermined the independence of the—of the judiciary. What was happening in Israel prior to October 7, was an effort to do that. But that has not yet been accomplished. And there was significant response from the Supreme Court itself on this issue. I think, though, in the current political environment, it seems unlikely that the Israeli courts will take it upon themselves to investigate charges by the prosecutor that, I think, the vast majority of Israelis believe to be illegitimate and politically motivated. And so I think that that’s probably unlikely. They’re unlikely to find a way to solution that way.   And I suspect—and, again, after listening to David—I suspect that the prosecutor understands that none of these people will ever really be brought to justice. And that may be a reason why, in fact, he went public so quickly with this. There will be—and I think it was a miscalculation on his part. And there’ll be consequences as a result. I don’t think it’s going to save any Palestinian lives. I think there’s going to be consequences in terms of American action, particularly congressional action targeting the ICC. So it is unlikely to do much good on the battlefield and it’s unlikely to do very good in terms of international law.  ROBBINS: Luis Oganes, can you identify yourself, please?  Q: Hi. Luis Oganes, JPMorgan.   My question is for Ray. You mentioned that, you know, the—what’s just happened in Iran won’t change, you know, the hardline position vis-à-vis foreign policy, because that is—there is consensus about, you know, the position of Iran. However, domestically, you know, President Raisi was very unpopular. I understand that only 30 percent of Iranians participated in the last election. And there is a process of, you know, trying to block any reformers from participating in elections. Do you think the conditions are there for a bit more of a wider opening for the next round of candidates, that actually a reformer could emerge this time around? Thanks.  TAKEYH: Well, that’s got to be the very controversial debate within the country, because there will be reform candidates signing up for participating in the election and being vetted by the Guardian Council—the Council of Guardians, which all of this has to take place in the compressed period of time of fifty days. The reform faction has long been exorcized from the body politic. I mean, even before the previous round of elections, the reform candidates were not allowed to participate. And, really, they were not allowed to participate since 2009, with the contested presidential election between former prime minister and, currently in house arrest for all these years, Mir Hossein Mousavi. So that faction is no longer relevant in terms of participation in politics at a formal level, although I think their views and pronouncements remained quite popular within the public at large.   What has happened in the previous elections that was—happened in the mid—for Assembly of Experts and the parliament, that had happened a couple of months ago, is that you have people like former President Hassan Rouhani being disqualified. The longest speaker in the history of the Iranian parliament, Ali Larijani, being disqualified, former minister of interior, and quite a killer in its own right, Mostafa Pourmohammadi being. So right now the disqualifications are no longer centered on reformists that have kind of different political ideas, but only the most reliable and ideological members of the political establishment, which increasingly are younger people in their forties and so forth that have come to political fruition, that dominant faction in the parliament today. And they’re rebelling against the old faction. And those rebellions are being successful, because they tend to be supported by Ali Khamenei.  So in this particular election, you’re going to have, my guess is, a limited number of choices, and limited number of candidates moving forward, simply because you need to fill that spot with alacrity. And you need to essentially fill it with people that are already vested in the system as it’s currently constituted and is currently—the belief structure that they all have. So I don’t see this as an opening for the reform movement, irrespective of the lack of popularity of President Raisi, as, I think, you suggested. I think in the last round—which was, to be fair, for parliament, Assembly Expert, it wasn’t 30 percent. In some of the major cities, like Tehran, it was probably 5 to 10 percent participation rate.  I don’t think the regime cares that much about that at this point. They sort of have bigger fish to fry. They’re going to suggest a greater degree of popular acclaim anyway. I think they suggested 47 percent of popular views. So I don’t see that as a new opportunity for opening the political system. The problem they’re going to have, as they’re dealing with this particular succession, is if somehow Ali Khamenei becomes incapacitated. Then I think the regime will be seriously in danger of the wheels falling off.  ROBBINS: You mean, because they’ll have a dual crisis?  TAKEYH: They’ll have a dual crisis, yeah.   Q: Thank you.  ROBBINS: Andrzej, you’ll have to identify yourself, including your last name.  OPERATOR: Andrzej, please accept the unmute now prompt.  Q: My name is Andrzej Dobrowolski. And I’m the New York correspondent for the Polish Press Agency.   I have two questions. First of all, what impact President Raisi’s death might have of Iran’s relations with Israel, Russia, other regional players, and the United States? And the second one is, how will his death affect Iran’s support for militias in the Middle East and its involvement in the Ukraine war?  TAKEYH: Those are fair questions. As I said, Ebrahim Raisi was not what you would call a foreign policy president. He wasn’t much of a domestic one, either. But at least he did—he kind of spoke about domestic affairs more so in his speeches. He talked a lot about economy and so forth, and mismanaged it rather dramatically. So he didn’t actually venture that much into providing a perspective on foreign relations, and all the issues that you spoke about, that differed from the established orthodoxy and establish pronouncement of the system. Those are not—those were not his thing. And, to be fair, his principal qualification for the job was that he was a member of the repressive state for a long time, in the judiciary and others, where he had very little problem executing people on as flimsy charges as possible.   So that was kind of his forte. That was his calling card. Now, he could comment on that if you asked him. But, you know, the intricacies of foreign relations, that was beyond him. And that was sort of beyond his foreign minister, actually. His foreign minister, who also perished in this particular accident, was also relatively lackluster in his approach. There is—what is happening in Islamic Republic, that’s been so thoroughly purged Ali Khamenei at all levels, is that you have people who are coming into the system that on a good day aspire to be mediocrities. And they don’t quite get out there, but at least aspire to that. So they don’t have a Zarif kind of a person that could charm the Westerners. They don’t have a Rouhani, who actually thought about issues differently—wrongly, it turned out.  But now you have people who kind of have their talking points, they seem to believe it, they’re authentic in terms of the revolutionary convictions. They believe, in terms of the larger international relations, that Iran has a place in the global configuration of powers, it has these global alliances with Russia and China, and all these three powers are in the same conflict with the United States and the West. And the West in this particular case is identified as Israel, as well as an adjunct of the American power and the Western imperialism in the Middle East. And they seem to think of Iran is a sort of a vanguard state within this great-power alignment. The other great power allies don’t think so. But, you know, as the 1970s song says, you should care if you’re feeling good. So, you know, they’re sort of going along with this.   That particular alignment, between Iran, Russia, and China, will change. And Iran will become more of a player, more of an equal player, when and if it gets nuclear weapons. It no longer will be satisfied with a junior partner status. As far as intervention in Ukraine, that makes no sense. It makes no national sense. It makes no ideological sense. There are no Islamist claims at stake in Ukraine. But that is the price you pay for great-power patronage. With great-power patronage also comes great-power responsibilities. And one of those is for Iran to be, at least for now, almost in an implicit war against NATO—an indirect war against NATO. That’s not in the national interest, or it doesn’t redeem any sort of ideological mission, but that is the price you pay for your great-power allies.  ROBBINS: We have—thank you for that. We have—and I’m going to remember that the great-power responsibilities for proxies as well.  So, Jessica Yellin, if you can really ask your question very quickly, identify yourself, and I’m going to let Steven, and David, and Ray have—jump in with one sentence, whether or not it answers your question. So, Jessica.  Q: Great. Hi. It’s Jessica Yellin. I’m with News Not Noise.   I’m wondering if you’d talk a little bit about the supreme leader’s son. I think is pronounced Mojtaba Khamenei.   TAKEYH: Yeah.  Q: If he were to—(inaudible)—Raisi, would you expect him to prioritize with the leadership change in any meaningful way?  TAKEYH: The Islamic Republic traditionally and historically does not do dynastic successions. That is what happens in—the Persian monarchs did that. The Arab presidents do that. That’s not what they do. Now, that doesn’t mean that the system up and down is not filled with nepo babies. Ali Bagheri is a nepo baby. His uncle was a great member of the clerical aristocracy. And he has all the smugness of arrogance of a nepo baby, if you ever met him. This system has all these nepo babies in it. You know, there’s a marriage to this, to that. But you can’t really formally have your supreme leader as a son of the former one. That’s not the way the system works.  The Islamic Republic, since its founding, has dispensed with some very essential criteria for the position of the supreme leader. You no longer have to have charismatic authority. You no longer have to have theological erudition. But you can’t be a kind of—the guy’s son and come to that post. Now, you can play a big role in the background, and so forth. And I think in that sense, Raisi may have been the right figure because he might have been a fairly passive supreme leader outside, you know, need for executions here and there. But I don’t see them doing dynastic succession.   If a dynastic succession does take place, that tells you how far the Islamic Republic has veered away from its original founding mission and its original creed and original way of doing things. As a matter of fact, most of the president’s songs, whether it’s Ahmadinejad, Rouhani, Rafsanjani, actually don’t do well in that system. Some being prosecutors, some are giving lucrative positions here and there. But in terms of ascension to the ultimate authority in the country, that would be hard to swallow, hard to justify. If they do it, that means they really have moved away and essentially abandoned the original mission of the Islamic Republic, which was some measure of egalitarianism in terms of the selection process.  ROBBINS: Thank you, Ray. It’s 2:45. Steven, twenty seconds. You got one last thought?  COOK: We could use a lot more news than noise. And I think that the that—what’s happening at the ICC is—as I said before—is backing the Israelis into a corner. And that’s not a place where I think it makes for productive negotiations or thinking about how to end this conflict.  ROBBINS: And, David, last thought to you.  SCHEFFER: Well, my last thought is just be cautious about these false equivalence arguments that we are seeing emerge now, that the Hamas side of the equation says, how dare you indict Hamas? The Israeli side says, how dare you indict the Israeli side? The court really doesn’t work that way. But I would suggest that it would have been rather remarkable if he had only issued arrest warrants against Hamas leaders. You can imagine the uproar that would have created. If he only indicted the Israelis, there would have been an uproar on that side as well. So he’s sort of trapped. And I don’t think it’s really a false equivalence. It’s just what do the facts show and where does that take you in terms of framing an actual arrest warrant?  ROBBINS: I want to thank you. Thank you for that. I want to thank David Scheffer. I want to thank Ray Takeyh. I want to thank Steven Cook. Transcript for this will be—can be found on CFR.org, additional resources on CFR.org and ForeignAffairs.com. I think Ray is going to have a piece up in a few hours, if not already up there. And thank you all for joining us.  COOK: Thank you all.  SCHEFFER: Thank you.  (END) 

Amy Pope discusses her work as director general of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the UN role in addressing climate mobility, legal frameworks for migration, and the present humanitarian crisis.The Silberstein Family Annual Lecture on Refugee and Migration Policy was established in 2019 through a generous gift from Alan M. Silberstein and the Silberstein family. The lecture provides CFR with an annual forum to explore emerging challenges in refugee and migration policy in the United States and around the world. 

David J. Scheffer, senior fellow at CFR, leads the conversation on complex humanitarian emergencies. CASA: Welcome to today’s session of the Winter/Spring 2024 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I’m Maria Casa, director of the National Program and Outreach department at CFR. Thank you all for joining us. Today’s discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/academic, if you would like to share them with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have David Scheffer with us to discuss complex humanitarian emergencies. David Scheffer is a senior fellow at CFR, where he focuses on international law and international criminal justice. He is professor of practice at Arizona State University, working out of Washington DC, and was previously a professor of law at Northwestern University, where he is director emeritus of the Center for International Human Rights at the Pritzker School of Law. Ambassador Scheffer served in both terms of the Clinton administration. During the second term, he was appointed the first-ever U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues. And he led the U.S. delegation to the UN talks establishing the International Criminal Court. Of particular interest to this group is his book, All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals, published by Princeton University Press in 2013. Welcome, David. Thank you very much for speaking with us today. SCHEFFER: Thank you, Maria. CASA: If you could begin by giving us a little bit of context, defining complex humanitarian emergencies, and maybe giving us a few examples. SCHEFFER: I will certainly do so. And it’s a great pleasure to be with everyone here today. This is a large audience and a very distinguished one, of students, of professors, of deans, and others in this space in our life, which is an interest in humanitarian needs and causes and emergencies around the world. What we’re going to talk about today is complex humanitarian emergencies. And it’s not too complex a definition. By using the word complex, we really mean that these are humanitarian needs—which usually look to issues of food security, to habitat, to safety, and security, and one’s livelihood—that enables one to live and thrive where one permanently lives and thrives. But then we have humanitarian emergencies. And they get complex when people are being displaced from where they normally live and nominally thrive as normal human beings. They get displaced by armed conflict, or by economic disparities, extreme poverty, or by climate change, or by political upheavals and rivalries within their countries, particularly targeting particular ethnic groups. That creates a complex situation because in order to solve it, you have to think not only of the basic necessities of life to solve it, but you have to think about war, how to solve that, or the climate crisis, how to solve that, or extreme poverty, how to solve that. And that makes it an extremely complex problem. What I want to do is speak for about maybe eight, nine minutes or so, and then open this up for a fulsome discussion among our many participants. And that means not necessarily asking me a question, but perhaps delivering a comment of your own—brief, of course, because we have a lot of people on this—so that you can contribute to this and add to the educational value of this for students now, and in the future. I want to point out the very latest list of humanitarian emergencies that have been identified by the International Rescue Committee. And their latest report, I think is—you know, in 2024 is a very, very enlightening one. And I encourage everyone to link on to it at some point after this discussion to look at it. The top ten are as follows: Sudan, the occupied Palestinian territory—which, of course, many countries would regard as the state of Palestine. More than 130 countries recognize that territory as the state of Palestine. But nonetheless, it’s now in the number two position, which is probably obvious to everyone on this webinar, given the news since October 7. South Sudan is number three. Burkina Faso, number four. Myanmar, number five. Mali, number six. Somalia, number seven. Niger, number eight. Ethiopia, number nine. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, number ten. And then, without ranking, but in the eleven through twenty slots are Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Chad, Ecuador—for the first time—Haiti, Lebanon, Nigeria, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen. So, among those twenty countries, you can see that there’s a tremendous challenge. Now, interestingly, the total number of people who are regarded as being caught up and trapped in humanitarian emergencies actually declined slightly or somewhat, from 2023 to 2024. In 2023, that number was about 363 million people in the world were trapped in humanitarian emergencies. In 2024, it’s estimated to be about 300 million. But that’s an incredible number. And I think in our recent understanding of humanitarian emergencies, remember that in Gaza two million people live. And they were not really on that list prominently until this year. I want to emphasize that the three major components that we typically see in humanitarian emergencies of this character, the engines of them, are: armed conflict, climate change, and economic shocks. And sometimes there’s a combination of them, where you will see a country and it’ll be identified—for example, Syria, Somalia, and Ethiopia, are described as humanitarian crises or emergencies driven by both conflict and climate change, coming together as sort of a double power punch at the people to forcibly displace them from their homes. I think in the readings—one of the most interesting readings that we offered to you on the list is the one regarding Sudan, which is kind of a sleeper now because it’s overtaken by the situation in Gaza and in Ukraine in the last couple of years. But Sudan is getting worse and worse and worse. And it is now at the top of the list. You’ll recall that in 2003 we were struggling with genocide in Darfur in Sudan. And that has actually resurrected itself in the last year or so in terms of continued genocide in Darfur. But that’s just part of the entire conflict in Sudan, which is an armed conflict. And it is driving tens and tens of millions of Sudanese across the borders into Chad, into South Sudan, forcibly displacing them within Sudan itself. So that is a true emergency. I want to point out a couple of sort of larger cosmic issues for you all to think about. One, you know, since after—well, in the early 2000s there was a tremendous amount of focus—and I was part of this—put on creating this principle called “responsibility to protect” (R2P). And it was memorialized in an outcome summit statement of the UN General Assembly in 2005, you know, in two paragraphs—I think it was paragraphs 136-137. But it was focused on the responsibility to protect populations who are victimized by atrocity crimes. Not by climate change, not by economic shocks, not by armed conflicts, per se. But rather by atrocity crimes—genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and they also listed ethnic cleansing specifically, even though that is part of crimes against humanity. But the point is that the world’s focus was on a duty to prevent—or a responsibility to protect—exposed populations to those crimes, a responsibility both domestically and then, if it’s not done domestically, the international community has to put that focus on it and ultimately work through the Security Council to address the problem. I would suggest that we’ve reached a stage now where, first of all, the responsibility to protect principle has come under great strain, particularly given the fractured character of the Security Council, to the extent that it’s not achieving the promise that it originally held. But we need to start thinking about what I would call a responsibility to survive, R2S. I’m just throwing this out at you. Because the humanitarian emergencies of our time are enormous. And they require very, very rapid action. And they require a focus on the responsibility of governments to address these humanitarian emergencies, both governments that have to address them domestically because they’re happening inside those countries but, of course, also the world community to try to staunch the egregious sort of assault on the humanity of various populations. And I just think we’ve reached that stage now where we have to have a responsibility to survive principle out there that holds governments accountable. And that takes me sort of to the next cosmic point I want to point out, which is I have—because my career has been in international criminal justice for decades now, and I’m always looking at, you know, who’s the next war criminal. And we just got that announcement yesterday out of The Hague with respect to indictments on two Russian military officials with respect to war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Ukrainian people during the winter season in that conflict. So that’s good. That’s good. Accountability for atrocity crimes is definitely part of our system now. It doesn’t work perfectly, obviously, but it’s there. What we are missing is holding accountable what I would call burden shifters. These are leaders who just dump burdens on the rest of us. They’re just dumping. A humanitarian emergency is a burden on the rest of the international community. That’s not a critical step. I mean, I’m just—obviously, we have to react to that and deal with it. But I always marvel at how certain leaders think that they can just act in a manner that shifts an enormous burden for taking care of just the basic necessities of life of tens of millions of people—they can just sort of dump it on to the international community. And so, we don’t have a system politically where we call out the leaders who—they might not be doing anything illegal, per se, but they sure as heck are shifting an enormous burden off of their shelf of responsibility and governance onto the rest of the world. And I think we should more clearly identify those individuals. We should figure out a way to identify burden shifters among leaders, strongmen or otherwise, around the world. And finally, I want to just make a final comment about Gaza, which of course has seized our attention so much particularly since October 7. What I have found disconcerting in analyzing this from an international law perspective is that I found myself in October-early November, rather easily stating principles of law pertaining to the right of self-defense, how one engages on a daily basis in combat in terms of recognizing principles of law that focus on proportionality, distinction, necessity, humanity, in how one wages combat between two combating forces. And to keep the fate of the civilian population, you know, front and center in how you engage on a day-by-day basis in combat. International lawyers, military lawyers, we can all talk about this. And there are lots of principles. It’s sort of a microscopic aspect of international law. We’ve got the Geneva Conventions of 1949. We’ve got the 1977 protocols to them. We have the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. We’ve got the statutes of the other tribunals of the last thirty years, all focusing on how, particularly judges, would determine, have war crimes been committed? Has a crime against humanity been committed? Has genocide been committed? That can all be determined on a sort of classic, day-by-day basis. It’s very granular. It can get very, very granular, in the courtroom particularly. But what international does not have—international law has not done yet is what we see in—what we haven’t accomplished a structure for yet is what we see really unfold in Gaza, whereby even if one can justify a daily use of military force, there has to be some structure in international law that defines the totality of what is occurring, and whether that is justifiable under law. Namely, how long does a military assault take place in Gaza, against what collection of targets, with what impact on the civilian population? At what point would international law step in and say: There is a red line here that you cannot cross any further. We don’t have that kind of structure in international law. It’s not there. That has to be a political decision. And you see that being played out now in the news, with the United States becoming more concerned, obviously, about the humanitarian situation there. Sort of coming late to the party. And the rest of the world being somewhat outraged by it. And yet in law, we don’t really have that structure for that totality analysis. And whether or not, when you start a conflict if you want to comply with international law—and, of course, you know, one could argue Hamas has no intention of complying with any law at all, so it’ll just proceed as it sees fit. But if you’re a law-abiding force, then you might sit down and say, well, over the next two to three months if we use military force in the following way in order to defeat Hamas, what does that mean in terms of the totality of the destruction, the totality of deaths, the totality of injuries? And where does it leave the population at the end? Are they in a state of starvation? You know, what do we anticipate? Does law give us any guidance here? And so, I just want to put that position down on the table, that I have found it somewhat frustrating that in analyzing the humanitarian emergency of Gaza, international law helps to some extent it just doesn’t go far enough in giving us guidance beyond that. It really becomes very much a political dynamic, as opposed to a strictly legal one. So let me leave it at that for my little introduction and let’s dive into it. People are free to share a comment or two. I strongly encourage students to participate. This is for you, the students, primarily. And so we want you to participate. Do not be shy. And obviously, we’ve got many other distinguished faculty members, deans, et cetera, on. And I welcome all of you for comment, for questions, but everyone should keep it short so that we can get as many people as possible. So I turn it over to Maria. CASA: Thank you, David. (Gives queuing instructions.) We will start out with a question from Jonathan Cristol, adjunct assistant professor of political science at Yeshiva University. Jonathan. You have the unmute prompt to accept. Oh, we can come back to you later, Jonathan. Let’s go to Stephen Kass, adjunct professor at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University. Q: Thank you, Maria. David, thank you so much for this very modest, self-effacing series of comments, and for all the great work you have done for the world. My question is not about the second subject, Gaza, but about the first. You raised the R2S suggestion. The problems of conflict, and climate change, and economics that are driving the migration and the humanitarian crises you focused on are hard to pin on particular leaders. In fact, it’s the international community that, to a very considerable degree, has flooded the world with arms, and certainly has led to the extraordinary climate impacts that are driving people off their land. I agree that corruption is an issue, but it seems to me hard to pin responsibility for the first two significant causes of these crises on individual leaders, particularly in the developing world. SCHEFFER: Stephen, I accept the premise of your question. I would simply add that really what I’m focusing on are those leaders that self-initiate, in particular, armed conflicts that drive—that are sort of power-seizing conflicts internally that drives so much of this. I mean, I could—you know, the Myanmar military would be, you know, sort of candidate number one. But even on climate change, et cetera, I mean, I would look back at the presidency of Mr. Bolsonaro in Brazil, and ask during—you know, during his term what did he do with respect to climate change challenges in Brazil that either exacerbated the situation there or, you know, diminished them? Not necessarily for purposes of legal culpability, but I think to call them out, to essentially almost shame them under old human rights principles of shaming. That they were part of the problem and not part of the solution. So it’s—I accept exactly what you’re saying. I’m just saying that I still think there should be some focus on the responsibility of leaders to get it as right as possible while they’re in governance, and not to sort of cross what I would call as red lines that clearly exacerbate situations that that can lead to humanitarian emergencies. That’s my basic point. CASA: Thank you. Your comments on burden shifting has interested our audience. We have two written questions that I’ll put together for you. One is from Fodei Batty, professor of political science at Quinnipiac University, who says: Dr. Scheffer points out leaders who dump their problems, burdens, responsibilities on the rest of U.S./international community. But don’t such bad leaders do so because the rest of the international community is complicit in their actions? Every bad leader has a powerful friend somewhere in the international community who offers them some level of protection because of their own national interests. How do you go around the problem? Should great powers be more responsible in who they regard as friends and who others consider bad leaders? And second to that is a written question from Elke Zuern, professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College, who writes: My class is interested in a bit more detail on your interesting point regarding burden shifters. SCHEFFER: Right. Well, let me—let me answer both of them. I think what you’re identifying is a clearly acknowledged point, which is the double standards involved. And I’m extremely conscious of that. The Global South in particular I think today looks at the actions of the major powers—whether it be China, Russia, the United States, the European Union—and their responsibility for climate change over the decades, and also for economic issues that they perhaps could have had much greater influence in solving rather than exacerbating, whether it be almost, you know, punitive tariff regimes, et cetera, that put a great burden on developing economies. So I get it. I’m not trying to exclude the great powers from burden shifting. And I know it’s probably controversial to sort of place the United States in yet another position of responsibility in the world, but I think we always are recognizing the contribution the United States made, unfortunately, to climate change, and also to economic situations in various parts of the world that we try to solve, but that we also have to recognize sometimes we’re the cause of, at least partially, in the beginning. So yeah, it’s not—I mean, I’m not trying to establish legal accountability. I’m just trying to say that there must be a recognition in governance. What is governance of a society? What does it comprise of? Does it comprise, regardless of double standards or whatever, dumping these problems on other countries? Is that good governance, or is that bad governance? How does one define governance today? It might sound a little simplistic, but I see it every day in the news. And so, I think that gets to the second question that I just want to emphasize. I find that in almost everything that I approach these days with international parties—whether they be in academia, in government, in journalism—that the double standards argument is constantly being made. For example, I have tried for two years just on my narrow beat of the world—international criminal law—to work with others to construct a special tribunal on the crime of aggression against Ukraine. And yet, it has proven so difficult to do that because of the allegation of double standards, particularly by the Global South. That we’re paying attention to what has happened in Ukraine as opposed to paying attention to what has happened elsewhere in the world, even with respect to the crime of aggression. And in particular for the United States, you know, the first utterance is, well, what about the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003? Please explain. So that comes up again, and again, and again. And it’s a very, very difficult hurdle to jump. CASA: Thank you. We will take the next question from Clemente Abrokwaa, associate teaching professor at the African Studies Program at Pennsylvania State University. Clemente. Q: Thank you so much for your insightful talk. I have two short questions. And the first one is, the numbers that you mentioned, regarding the humanitarian crisis and so on, I could tell that—we could all tell that a greater number of it is from Africa. And I wanted to know why that is so. And second—my second question also is—echoes the first speaker, that mentioned about by the flooding of the—of guns or weapons at the international level that goes into Africa, and elsewhere. I know that Africa is—you know, they don’t really manufacture these guns. They buy them. So how can that be checked? Yeah, so basically those are my two questions. Thanks. SCHEFFER: Well, thank you so much, Clemente. I will do my best to answer these. In terms of their first question, what we have seen in the last year in particular in Africa is the tumult and somewhat the collapse of democratic governance and stability in the Sahel region of Africa, the middle part of Africa. One country after another. And those countries are all popping up on the Humanitarian Emergency Register now. And it is driven by internal power struggles, internal armed conflicts. I don’t think I would—I mean, I could be proven wrong on this—but I don’t think we’re looking in the Sahel necessarily at cross-border armed conflicts. I think almost everything there right now is internal. I could be proven wrong on that. But, of course, you have the outside influence, particularly of the Wagner Group from Russia, and other nonstate actors, are ginning things up in the Sahel. And I think that shows the increased focus on Africa in the humanitarian emergency space. As far as the weapons are concerned, I have found it rather ironic—and sort of understandably ironic, but still ironic—that when it comes to the flow of weapons, on the one hand we have an intense need—at least many of us would argue—for there to be arms manufacturing and arms transfers to Ukraine to defend itself from Russian aggression. That has—you know, in the human rights community we normally and naturally argue for regulation of arms transfers, for limitation of arms transfers. All of this is bad. However, in the last couple of years, I’ve seen a very clear shift in attitudes, whereby, frankly, the task of saving humanity actually requires manufacturing arms and delivering them to countries in need who are acting in self-defense. And we didn’t really—you know, we didn’t have an adequate capacity to do that when the Ukraine war of 2022 broke out. And we’ve been catching up ever since. I mean, the stories out of Europe with trying to regalvanize their arms manufacturing plants, building new ones in order to meet this need—not only for Ukraine, but also in the future for the defense of Europe under NATO—is all an arms manufacturing, arms transfer issue. And of course, here in the United States it’s a huge issue now of gearing up the arms industry and paying them with public funds to actually provide all of these arms. So then you come to Africa. And unfortunately, the spillover is a lack of focus on regulating arms transfers. There’s a treaty out there on arms transfers that is more or less been—you know, has laid fallow now. But it just means the focus has turned away from actually regulating arms transfers to ramping up arms manufacturing, and presumably legitimate transfers. But I think the blowback is, in Africa, you’re going to see a lot of that just gin up more availability of arms for conflicts, particularly non-international armed conflicts, which are not helpful to peace, security, stability, and good governance in Africa. So I’ll leave it there for that answer. CASA: Our next question is a written one. It comes from Zoe Hughes, a graduate student at Stanford University: What value do legal frameworks of war hold in the now, if the global audience cannot confidently assess in the now proportionality and necessity? How do you recommend the global audience factors the laws of war into their response to wars? SCHEFFER: That’s a very, very good question, because it makes even my job very difficult too. In other words, on a day-by-day basis how am I supposed to assess, sitting here in Washington, DC, the extent to which the Israeli Defense Forces have complied with the law of war and international humanitarian law yesterday in the conflict? How do I understand what Hamas has or hasn’t done in that respect? It’s very, very difficult for the public to know what, ultimately in a courtroom, would be the evidence of whether or not a military force has complied with the standard principles—which we do have in customary international law; we have it in rules of engagement, et cetera—of, proportionality, namely you don’t kill more civilians than is absolutely necessary to get at the military advantage of hitting that combat force you’re trying to hit at, and necessity, that the object here is to go after Hamas and no one else. And distinction, between trying to identify between civilians, and, in this case, Hamas. If they’re in a residential building, do you know who’s the civilians and who are the Hamas fighters? How do you calculate that? And if they’re firing back at you out of one window, what’s the story with the window on top? Is that fair game? Who knows? Those are determinations of distinction. And then just basic humanity, which sometimes the military describes as fighting with honor. Namely, yeah, there’s an enemy. There’s combat. But there’s also the honor of doing it in a way that complies with law and, of course, preserves the civilian population to the greatest extent possible. I think my point is, when I say, “the civilian population to the greatest extent possible,” yes, on any given day, with any given strike. But the question is, are you asking the larger—I mean, does one ask the larger question of, at what point is the civilian population, frankly, perhaps of more significance than totally defeating the enemy? Literally, at what point does that red line get crossed? And so that would be my response. CASA: Next question comes from Otávio Cunha, an undergraduate student at Lewis University, who writes: With respect to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, what role, if any, is the United Nations Security Council playing in addressing the situation and promoting a peaceful resolution to the conflict? SCHEFFER: Well, they have—they have been convening and holding sessions, and resolutions have been introduced calling—particularly those introduced by almost everyone other than the United States—call for a full ceasefire. And I think in the minds of many of those who introduced those resolutions, a permanent ceasefire. Now, the United States, as you probably know from reading the news of the last few weeks, has been shifting its position now to this term “ceasefire.” I think has been somewhat confusing for the general public because I think most of the public sees ceasefire as a permanent thing. Whereas you can have a temporary ceasefire for humanitarian purposes as well, and it’s still a ceasefire, but for a temporary period of time. And that’s really what the United States has been supportive of. And I know that Vice President Kamala Harris recently emphasized in Selma on Sunday that the United States supports a temporary ceasefire of six weeks to get this humanitarian situation under control and to get the hostages returned. Those are the two big, you know, priorities. But it’s that dispute within the Security Council over are you permanently ending the war or are you just temporarily. The United States has not been prepared yet to say under Chapter Seven authority of the UN Charter under the Security Council, Israel must completely, permanently cease all combat actions in Gaza. Why? Because of the threat of Hamas. But that is not how the rest of the Council sees it. And since the United States has a veto, there remains somewhat of a gridlock. But it is possible, ultimately, to work our way out of that gridlock in the Security Council if we sort of do two things, from the United States perspective. One, just to almost ignore what the Russian ambassador is saying. He’s there to score points, as hypocritical as it is. And, you know, he’s just going to say whatever he wants to say. And let’s not get too worked up about it. But I think the other point is that we can actually start to use our leverage within the Security Council I think to get, if I may put it this way, Israel to the right place on all of this. And to make it clear that, you know, we’re not simply going to follow directions from Tel Aviv in terms of how—or, Jerusalem—in terms of how to conduct ourselves in the Security Council, because we need to meet the priorities that are in the best national security interests of the United States. At this time, I would describe them as, obviously, the security of Israel, but also the humanitarian survival in good order of the Palestinian population in Gaza. And the two of them are going to have to come together as twin objectives and to be achieved as twin objectives. It’s not binary. It’s not one or the other. It has to be both. And that’s what the U.S. has to keep pressing for and persuading other Security Council members to buy into to that formula. And, of course, part of that formula, if I may say, is the end game, which is moving towards a negotiated outcome to all of this that resolves, in large part, this situation that is triggering so many humanitarian emergencies. And to solve it, shall we say, quote/unquote, “once and for all.” CASA: Thank you. We have a lot of written questions. We would love to hear your voices. So please, don’t be shy about raising your hand and asking them verbally. In the meantime, we’ll go to Evan Maher, undergraduate student at Buffalo State University, who writes in, asking: We have heard a lot about Palestine and Ukraine in the media lately. Why do you think that these receive so much attention while others, such as the conflict in Sudan, are also popping up? Would you say that it is due to these issues being in nations which the U.S. and the rest of the Western world interact with more? SCHEFFER: Well, I would say that answers—or, the answer you provided more or less explains it. But I would take you back to, you know, there was a time in 2003, when the situation in Darfur was at the top of the list of attention by even the United States government. And that was in Africa. It was in Sudan. It was a genocidal situation in Darfur. So, it’s not as if just because something is in Africa it will not accord attention. I do think that it’s being out-competed by the urgency and, you know, the attention by everyone on what’s going on in Gaza, and before that, in Ukraine. I mean, even the media exposure of what is occurring in both locations—in both regions is swamping us, particularly with Ukraine. And then once journalists could get closer and closer to see what’s going on in Gaza, it just—you know, there’s a shock value to that every single day. And politicians and government officials have to react to that. That’ll be issue number one at the morning meeting, you know. And you just—there’s no way of avoiding it. And that means that it’s going to be prioritized for action. But it also explains why you see someone like Secretary of State Blinken, even though there’s the continuing war in Ukraine, the conflagration in Gaza and Israel, you still see that he has to do his job dealing with other issues in the world, whether it be traveling through Africa, or traveling through South America. He does that, even in the midst of all of this, in order to address those issues. But I have to acknowledge the point of the question, which is right now, the worst humanitarian disaster, emergency in the world is in Sudan. That’s where it’s happening. It’s also in Gaza. It’s also in Ukraine. But just in terms of sheer numbers, it’s in Sudan. And the modest proposal I’ve made, because I work the law beat on these things, is I do not understand why the United States is not taking a clear initiative in the Security Council to address charges of genocide in Darfur under the authority of the original referral by the Security Council of Darfur in 2005, I think, to address the issue of accountability for that crime. Well, that’s still on the books. It’s still alive and active. It can be reenergized, reactivated for the current situation that is hitting Darfur. And so that’s a way for the United States to say, yeah, we recognize everything else going on, but we need to get back to a problem that has reignited. And that is genocide in Darfur. And it needs to be dealt with by this Security Council, in part to support the work of the International Criminal Court, which has been investigating the 2003 genocide and issued indictments with respect to it. But the United States can bring that to the forefront again and seek action in the Security Council. CASA: We will now take a question from JY Zhou, who is executive director of the Center for Global Engagement at James Madison University. JY. Q: Hi, can you hear me? CASA: Yes. Q: Hi. My name is Chris Nelms. I’m a student here at James Madison University. And my question is, you mentioned the list of the twenty countries that are facing the humanitarian crisis. I wanted you to know if there were nations on that list—or that are there were countries that have left that list, and how they succeeded in getting off that list, and how other countries can learn from that. Thank you. SCHEFFER: Yeah. Well, one of them, although it’s in the second ranking now, is Yemen. Three or four years ago, we put Yemen at the very top of the humanitarian emergency list. But there has been a truce in the armed conflict in Yemen. And, of course, this is where, as you know, the Houthis are operating in order to cripple the commercial shipping through the Red Sea in protest of what’s going on in Gaza. But nonetheless, despite the Houthi, frankly, attention to those kinds of issues, the humanitarian emergency in Yemen, while it’s still there, has greatly receded, and is not even in the top ten anymore. It’s in the top twenty. So, I think I’ll leave it at that example. I don’t think, for example—well, I was going to say one that I see is now there. I think the interesting thing is what has newly arrived on the list in the top twenty, and that’s Ecuador. Who would have thought, you know? But the situation there is quite dire now, politically, and also with armed gangs and stuff. So that’s a very difficult one. And, by the way, I would also just make an editorial comment about Haiti, which is in the top twenty. Not the top ten, but the top twenty of the IRC list. It is—it’s not as if millions or thousands of people are being displaced in Haiti. They honestly don’t have very much territory to go to, even if they were. But rather, it’s the state of life in Haiti as controlled by the gangs as opposed to a government in Haiti. And there’s—just to go back to the last question on the Security Council—the Security Council has been laboring for a long time now, to try to get some kind of law enforcement capacity into Haiti. Kenya offered peacekeepers for that purpose. And then there’s been some backtracking. Everything is now under discussion again. But I have always thought, you know, because I dealt with Haiti during the Clinton administration and saw it upfront. I’ve always thought Haiti really is a special responsibility of the United States. It’s in our neighborhood. It was the first real surge of democracy in the western hemisphere. And we have a lot of immigrants from Haiti. And I just think if this country were to have some special responsibility for any particular nation in the world—in other words, responsibility to respond, to deal with the problems, to address the problems of Haiti, it’s the United States. And I’ve always been a little distressed that we don’t have a greater push domestically to address this terrible emergency that’s taking place quite close to our shores. CASA: Ambassador Susan Page’s class at the University of Michigan is joining us, and they’ve written in: What do you think a new international law defining totality would look like? More specifically, would it be another atrocity crime or under a different designation? SCHEFFER: Right. I don’t know if I would list it as an atrocity crime, per se. I think you might be able to get there eventually. But I would like to see something a little more towards the state responsibility construct to begin with, as opposed to just trying to pinpoint this on individual criminal responsibility. I would like to see more of a state responsibility treaty of some sort, whereby nations agree—it’s sort of like an extension of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, but primarily on a state responsibility platform. So that governments are on notice that once they go down this path of armed conflict, there needs to be a greater sense of the totality of the conflict and what their responsibilities are to acknowledge the realities of that totality, and not try—to put it quite bluntly, you don’t want to slaughter humanity in order to save humanity. There’s got to be a better balance. And I think it’s an excellent question. And don’t assume I’ve thought this all through. (Laughs.) This has really occurred to me, frankly, from the Gaza experience of the last several months, that we have this great gap in international law. And I do think it could be filled with a better attention to what do we need more than just the Geneva Conventions in terms of a focus on the entirety of the conflict? CASA: We have a raised hand now from Charlotte Langeveld, college lecturer at Ocean County College. Charlotte. Q: Yes. Hi. Thank you for taking my question. And thank you for hosting this session. It’s very informative and important. I worked as a humanitarian aid worker in the Sudan from about 1998 to 2001, and I saw the brewings of the genocide. And, you know, I didn’t see it happen. And I left and I saw it happen. And I’m like, oh, makes sense because, of course, there’s a lack of resources that people begin to fight over. In this case, I believe it’s water. And then—it was water, and then you had, you know, different ethnic groups from the north, and the animist Africans’ land being trashed, villages, et cetera. I just wonder, do we need to look at the political economy, the global political economy, and figure out how to stop gold as being the interest, then conflict minerals in the Congo? And, I don’t know, because as long as governments and corporations are connected, how is the United Nations going to make a difference in trying to address these things? I’m sorry, I’m a little passionate, but there you go. SCHEFFER: Thanks, Charlotte. Very, very, very good question. And, you know, one of the readings that we assigned is by my friend John Prendergast, “Dirty Money is Destroying Sudan,” from February 27, only a few days ago in Foreign Affairs. And that article points to the very point that you’re making, which is that the source of a lot of the trouble in Sudan is, frankly, a race for gold. And those who are trying to influence that, and money laundering, and, you know, countries like the United Arab Emirates that are just knee-deep in—obsessed with the gold of Sudan. So that’s all very, very important. But it actually gives me an opportunity to make a larger point, which is I’ve spent, oh, gosh, thirty years on not only accountability for atrocity crimes, but also the huge challenge of prevention of atrocities. And so there’s a lot of focus on that. You know, how do you prevent atrocities from occurring? Is it an armed conflict, where you can prevent war crimes from, you know, being the sine qua non of every day of fighting, et cetera? So that’s—we’ve got a lot of history with prevention of atrocities. But we don’t have that same kind of sharp focus on atrocity—on prevention of a humanitarian emergencies. We respond to humanitarian emergencies. And there’s a huge school of thought and practice on how do you most effectively respond to humanitarian emergencies, whether it be the provision of food, dealing with refugees, employment issues, you know, political settlements that return refugees to their homes and their countries, et cetera. All of that is part of dealing with humanitarian emergencies. But I’m not aware of a kind of a school of thought out there where we place a lot of focus on, well, wait a minute, how can we prevent this humanitarian emergency from occurring? We see it coming. And, yes, there will—there are—even the IRC report, if you were to look at it, will say, yes, we need to have, you know, better educational issues dealt with, we need to have better economic relations established, you know, better farming techniques—I mean, all sorts of things to address what could be a humanitarian emergency. And, of course, we need to deal with climate change. But I don’t see it as a coherent sort of school of thought, or there’s no academy of prevention of humanitarian emergencies that I’m aware of. I could be proven wrong. It certainly has not come to my attention. Because I’ve been so immersed with prevention of atrocities that it occurs to me that one could also address prevention of humanitarian emergencies. CASA: Thank you. I think we can squeeze in one more question. Sebastian Kandakudy is an undergraduate student at Lewis University. Sebastian. Q: Hi. My question is, how should global actors navigate a delicate balance between the living essentials, humanitarian aid to vulnerable populations, and avoiding unintentional bolstering of oppressive regimes or prolonging conflicts in negotiations over aid access? SCHEFFER: Yeah. Let me take one prong of your question, if I might. Which is, unfortunately, the reality of responding to humanitarian emergencies so often rests upon, you know, negotiating and getting relief to the oppressed, to the population that is in dire need of it. But in doing so, one can be bolstering the very regime that is causing the problem, because—that’s part of my burden shifting argument. That, yeah, I know, we got to—we got to accept the burden now, and deal with this, and basically save your people because it’s our responsibility as decent international actors to do so and through our allegiance to, you know, the United Nations principles, our participation in the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, et cetera. But at the end of the day, it can actually be a facilitator for the survival of the very regime that’s causing the problem, because it doesn’t have to deal with the problem anymore. So I think I probably should leave it at that, Maria. A very rich subject to talk about. CASA: Thank you. I’m sorry we can’t go to the rest of the questions. But, David, thank you so much for speaking with us today, and to all of you for your questions and comments. The next Academic Webinar will take place on Wednesday, March 27, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Moisés Naím, distinguished fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace will lead a conversation on authoritarianism. In the meantime, I encourage you to learn about CFR paid internships for students and fellowships for professors at CFR.org/careers; follow @CFR_Academic on X; and visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Thank you again for joining us today. We look forward to tuning in for our next webinar on March 27. (END)

The Council on Foreign Relations hosts experts to discuss recent developments on the humanitarian crisis and to analyze the laws of war and human rights in Gaza.