John Bolton wants to remind you that Iran hawks don’t care about international law or the meaning of words:

Second, no Security Council action can prevent the U.S. from using force to protect itself from Iranian nuclear weapons. Article 51 of the U.N. Charter affirms “the inherent right of individual and collective self-defense,” which means that decisions relating to self-defense rest with each member state.

The shorter version of Bolton’s argument is this: attacking Iran can’t be illegal because I choose to call it self-defense, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop us anyway. That’s pretty much what we would expect Iran hawks to say about this. We know that their respect for international law vanishes as soon as it becomes an obstacle to U.S. military action. We also know that they will define self-defense so expansively that it can be applied to any military action that the U.S. happens to take. But it’s vital to keep in mind that preventive war can’t be waged in self-defense. It is an inherently aggressive and unjustifiable kind of war. Calling it self-defense is just a lie.

As a practical matter, it’s true that the Security Council can’t stop or even punish a U.S. attack on Iran because the U.S. can always veto any resolution that condemns the act, but all that this proves is that the U.S. can abuse its power. The U.S. is supposed to be one of the supporters of the international order hawks are always talking about when it suits them, but they have absolutely no qualms about violating core principles of that order whenever they want. In fact, Iran hasn’t violated its commitments under the NPT, but even if it had that would not make it fair game for an attack from another state. Even if Iran withdrew from the NPT tomorrow and soon thereafter conducted a nuclear weapons test, the U.S. would have no license to attack Iran. Attacking Iran would have nothing to do with “protecting” the U.S. from an Iranian nuclear weapon (which would not yet exist in this scenario in any case), and it certainly isn’t covered by Article 51 of the Charter. That is a claim so bizarre and deluded that a reasonable person would be embarrassed to make it, so naturally Bolton makes it without blinking. As I said earlier this month, Iran hawks don’t care. They have no problem with launching an illegal war on Iran, and they have no problem concocting absurd justifications for such a war.