Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, has written to Secretary General Antonio Guterres demanding that Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, and Jordan pay reparations for allowing the United States to use their territory to launch attacks on Iran. Some of these states, Iravani wrote, were “directly involved” in what he described as “unlawful armed attacks targeting civilian objects.”
The demand is blunt: these states “should make full reparation including compensation for all material and moral damage.”
It is also, in the language of international law, not unreasonable.
The Legal Question
The core of Iran’s argument rests on a principle that international lawyers have debated for decades but have rarely been forced to confront so directly: does hosting a foreign military base make you complicit in what launches from it?
The US maintains significant military installations across the Gulf – Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Naval Support Activity Bahrain, facilities in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. Since the US-Israeli strikes on Iran began on February 28, these installations have served as staging grounds, refueling points, and command-and-control hubs for operations that have killed over 1,300 Iranian civilians and struck universities, schools, bridges, and energy infrastructure.
Iran’s position is straightforward: you let them park their bombers on your runways, you pay for what those bombers did.
The Gulf states had previously demanded that Iran pay reparations for war damage inflicted on their own territory. Iran struck back at US bases and Gulf state civilian infrastructure – airports, seaports, and oil and gas facilities – in retaliation for the American-Israeli campaign. Iravani dismissed the Gulf states’ reparation demands as “legally untenable and fundamentally divorced from factual and legal realities.”
The Pasteur Institute Strike
On April 13, US-Israeli airstrikes damaged the Pasteur Institute in Tehran – one of the oldest medical research facilities in the Middle East, established in 1920. The institute conducts research on infectious diseases, produces vaccines, and serves as a reference laboratory for the World Health Organization. Striking a medical research facility carries particular legal weight under international humanitarian law, which prohibits attacks on civilian objects unless they have been converted to military use – a claim no one has made about the Pasteur Institute.
The strike adds to a growing catalogue of civilian infrastructure targeted since February 28. Iran has documented damage to educational institutions, transportation networks, power generation facilities, and now a century-old medical research center. Each strike strengthens Tehran’s legal argument that the campaign is not limited to military objectives.
Complicity or Coercion?
The Gulf states face an uncomfortable question. These nations did not initiate the war with Iran. Most of them – particularly Qatar and the UAE – had spent years carefully cultivating diplomatic relationships with Tehran precisely to avoid being drawn into a conflict of this nature. Saudi Arabia and Iran restored diplomatic relations in 2023 under Chinese mediation, a breakthrough that was supposed to mark a new chapter in Gulf security.
That chapter appears to have been overwritten. When the US launched its campaign, the Gulf states were faced with the reality that American bases on their soil would be used regardless of their preferences. Refusing to cooperate with Washington carried its own risks – the withdrawal of the security umbrella that has defined Gulf foreign policy for decades.
But Iran’s legal argument does not account for coercion. Under international law, the question of complicity turns on whether a state facilitated an unlawful act. If the strikes on Iranian civilian objects are found to violate international humanitarian law, then the states that provided the launch platforms may bear a share of legal responsibility – whether they enthusiastically supported the campaign or merely failed to prevent their territory from being used.
A Precedent in the Making
Whatever one thinks of Iran’s demand, its significance should not be understated. If the principle that Iravani articulates gains traction – that hosting a military base creates liability for the operations conducted from it – the implications extend far beyond the Gulf. Every nation that hosts a US military installation, from Germany to Japan to Djibouti, would need to reckon with the possibility that their territory could be used to launch strikes they did not authorize, against targets they did not choose, and that they could be held financially responsible for the consequences.
That is a question worth watching – not because Iran is likely to collect reparations anytime soon, but because the legal framework it is constructing may outlast the war that produced it.
