Australia to provide military support to Gulf states <\/a><\/p>\nPrime Minister Anthony Albanese confirms the Australian Defence Force will deploy an E-7A Wedgetail aircraft to the Gulf to help protect and defend the region, providing long-range reconnaissance activity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another reference to it was buried at the end of the government’s official statement this morning, in which it confirmed it would “notify the United Nations Security Council of relevant actions taken under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter”.<\/p>\n
There’s nothing sinister about this. In fact, Professor Rothwell said, it’s actually clear evidence that Australia is standing on fairly firm legal ground in its decision to go to war.<\/p>\n
“If a state is legitimately exercising self-defence \u2014 as the United Arab Emirates clearly is \u2014 it can call on literally any other state to come to its aid and assistance,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Any other state can do that, even if you don’t have a defence or treaty relationship with that country.”<\/p>\n
That, he said, stood in stark contrast to the original strikes on Iran by Israel and the Trump Administration, which rested on “dubious or non-existent” legal foundations.<\/p>\n
In other words, even if Iran bore the brunt of an illegal attack in the first place, its furious subsequent aerial assault on a dozen other countries across the region creates legal space for Australia \u2014 and others \u2014 to respond.<\/p>\n
LoadingWedgetail deployment makes Australians ‘legitimate target’<\/p>\n
The government’s decision to join the conflict may be courageous and principled, or it may be foolish and catastrophic \u2014 either way, it’s very likely legal.<\/p>\n
But the risk is that the deracinated language being used by Labor \u2014 “defensive action”, “providing for defence” \u2014 obscures much more than it illuminates.<\/p>\n
Australian boots may not be on the ground, but it’s still worth remembering that the aviators and RAAF personnel on board the Wedgetail are now fighting a war.<\/p>\n
“Any Australian personnel committed to this [Wedgetail] aircraft will be considered a combatant under international humanitarian law,” Professor Rothwell said.<\/p>\n
“Which means they are a legitimate target from the other combatants \u2014 which in this case, let’s face it, is the Iranians.”<\/p>\n
Read more about the Iran war:<\/p>\n
Of course, ADF personnel preparing to fly into the middle of a chaotic war zone probably don’t need any reminders of the dangers and consequences of what they’re embarking on.<\/p>\n
But the decision to send Australian men and women into conflict remains one of the most serious ministers can make when they gather around the Cabinet table.<\/p>\n
It might be better to speak plainly about it.<\/p>\n
Loading…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Are we at war? It’s a reasonable question for Australians to ask, given the government is sending one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[263935,43,12241,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-531501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-australia-in-iran-war","tag-headlines","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1773164891_966_c946468fdb6623737f47dde16cfd0743.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n