In order to invade another country, there had to be an imminent threat of attack against you, which wasn\u2019t present here, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTherefore, the defence under international law of self-defence in the face of an imminent attack didn\u2019t occur.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said the UN Security Council also had not approved this war, nor had the issue been put to them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no authorisation for it. So yes, if I\u2019d been in Government today, I would have been taking the same position as 2003.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a \u201cno-brainer\u201d to take that stance in 2003, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, let\u2019s face it, it made for a pretty frosty atmosphere with Washington DC. Very frosty indeed. It was in the aftermath of 9\/11, and the US had a reasonably easy pushover of the Taliban, who, of course, were no match for the armed might of the United States at the time.<\/p>\n
Former Prime Minister Helen Clark has spoken out against New Zealand’s response to the war in Iran. Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n
\u201cBut look back and say, what did 20 years of war on Afghanistan achieve? What\u2019s the last 20 years for Iraq achieved? If you put a foot into the politics of the Middle East like this, I fear it\u2019s not going to end well for anyone and tragically, a lot of people will be killed.\u201d<\/p>\n
She believed Israel was \u201ccalling the shots\u201d around the decision to start the war.<\/p>\n
Clark said comments from the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the US had to join in the attack because Israel was going to raised questions about \u201cwho is leading here?\u201d.<\/p>\n
Clark said it did not appear Iran had a \u201cunified national liberation movement that\u2019s waiting to move in\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you ask yourself \u2018how will this end?\u2019<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump had the power to declare the war over when it suited him, Helen Clark said. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, some are starting to say that, you know, President [Donald] Trump is entirely capable of declaring victory and saying it\u2019s over when he feels he\u2019s bombed enough sites.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe may do that at the point where the markets go completely to custard, where the Europeans run out of gas, where the Gulf economies, which depend so much on their airline hubs and airline industry, tourism, expats buying expensive property and the rest of it, when they say \u2018help, you know, we just, we\u2019re not coping here, we\u2019re going under\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clark said there had also been \u201cbold talk about Cuba\u201d in recent days, and Greenland could draw focus again.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just don\u2019t know which course this is going to take.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clark was critical of the argument that focusing on the legality of the attacks ignored the repression of Iran\u2019s Government over its people.<\/p>\n
\u201cHave we invaded Saudi Arabia because it interns women\u2019s rights activists? Have we, you know, invaded Cameroon where there\u2019s many human rights abuses and ongoing repression of Anglophone speakers? Have we invaded the countries in the Sahel with military regimes which are repressing people? Have we invaded North Korea? You know, I mean, I could go on, there\u2019s a very long list,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Clark also pointed to a \u201ccrooked election\u201d in Uganda and the President of Zimbabwe trying to declare himself \u201cPresident for life\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, the Iranian regime is a very unpleasant one, but there are a lot of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clark said there were \u201cany number of pretty nasty governments around the world\u201d that breached human rights on a daily basis.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s handling of the response to the war had been “found wanting”, Helen Clark said. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the West were to work itself up into a paddy against each of them the way it has against Iran, we would be in perpetual war on many fronts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clark said Iran was also not the country fostering terrorist groups to do its bidding.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a level of double standard and hypocrisy about this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clark felt several aspects of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon\u2019s reaction to the Iran war had \u201cbeen found wanting\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a very, very difficult road ahead now with how this war is affecting the global economy, which affects us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Petrol prices, food costs and more would be impacted by the war.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need a steady hand on the tiller and the verdict increasingly is that our current Prime Minister can\u2019t provide that. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo unfortunately, I think he\u2019s put himself in a very difficult position by not understanding the brief, not being able to articulate a position.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luxon earlier fired back at Clark\u2019s social media comments.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think she called my post disgraceful. I\u2019d say what is disgraceful is a regime that actually kills its own people indiscriminately in the way that it has,\u201d he said to Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB on Monday.<\/p>\n
Luxon also emphasised New Zealand had not been consulted ahead of the strikes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an evil regime … New Zealand has condemned this regime for a long period of time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In order to invade another country, there had to be an imminent threat of attack against you, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[172506,1559,18788,1302,2740,266,305,32576,17702,16609,16950,6722,117,111,43,139,172507,69,90,415,5034,4514,312,3271,17213,41441,19554,1361,61,6382,6149,5977,2963],"class_list":["post-318762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-172506","tag-called","tag-clark","tag-compares","tag-former","tag-government","tag-have","tag-helen","tag-invasion","tag-iran","tag-iraq","tag-minister","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nobrainer","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-prime","tag-response","tag-same","tag-says","tag-should","tag-speaks","tag-stance","tag-taken","tag-that","tag-to","tag-took","tag-war","tag-which","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}