Zahra Bahrami, Mahdis Nazari, and Hananeh Mehdikhah were 7-year-olds who never returned home from school on February 28, 2026. Their school, the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School, was located adjacent to an Iranian military base. Despite the school walls being marked in blue and pink, an American Tomahawk missile allegedly missed its target and hit the school instead. At least 175 people, mostly 6-8-year-old schoolgirls like Zahra, Mahdis, and Hananeh were killed.
If this is not a crime against humanity, what is? If this is not an act after which the world can come together and say no to war, what does that act look like? It has been two weeks since that strike, yet nothing of substance has happened. On the contrary, the war in Iran has escalated. When asked about the strike itself, the president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, claimed: “It was done by Iran”. However, according to a New York Times report, a preliminary military investigation in the US has found America responsible for this attack. It seems the president has lied. It is also very likely that he has blood on his hands.
Joseph Berry Keenan, the American chief prosecutor at the Tokyo Trials, had envisaged such a day would come. He said in 1946, “If our leaders [the Allies] were guilty of what the prosecution charges these accused [waging war, crimes against humanity and war crimes], they would deserve the same punishment that we are asking this International Tribunal to impose [the death penalty].”
Now that such a day appears to have arrived, it is no surprise that what follows is not an international trial leading to the award of the death penalty to the president of the US, as Keenan had blustered. Instead, the world has been witnessing a masterclass in diplomatic pusillanimity and moral obfuscation. Condemnations of the attack were made as homilies by the secretary-general of the United Nations and most of its member states. On the other hand, the only action with some legal effect has been the UN resolution 2817 of 2026 sponsored by Bahrain and supported by 135 countries, condemning the “egregious attacks by the Islamic Republic of Iran” against neighbouring states. It specifically deplored the targeting of civilians by Iran and called upon Iran to follow international law, without saying anything about American and Israeli actions. The one-sidedness of it is antithetical to the very raison d’être of the UN — “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”. Only one side started the present war, and it was not Iran.
The parallels with the League of Nations at the onset of the Second World War are striking. Like the UN, the League of Nations was set up to maintain world peace and, in the words of Susan Pedersen, one of the foremost authorities on the subject, “spectacularly failed to do so”. Part of the reason was its endless deliberations and mealy-mouthed responses, which had no practical effect in deterring invasions of Manchuria, Ethiopia and, ultimately, Eastern Europe. As Pedersen writes, they “drove the aggressor states out of the League, but not out of the invaded territory.” The League was also dealt a difficult hand — the most powerful nation, then as now, the US, never joined the organisation. The final nail in the coffin was when the League secretary-general, Joseph Avenol, appeared ready to collaborate with the Nazis, with a view to reining them in. Its moral high ground was irreversibly lost.
The UN’s efforts at peace-mongering in Iran, and in Palestine and Ukraine before it, have been similarly ineffectual. These have been characterised by elaborate condemnations with little deterrent effect, equivocation in calling out aggressor states and, ultimately, little support from nations that wielded real power in the world. The US, though always a part of the UN (unlike the League), now appears to be entirely indifferent to it, as well as to international law and the post-war world order which it helped create. Like Avenol, resolution 2817 of 2026 is a clear sign that far from speaking truth to power, the UN is plainly trying to appease the US rather than calling it out.
For this, it cannot be blamed beyond a point. History has shown that when a powerful global actor flexes its muscles, there is very little an institution can do to stop it. This is precisely why the UN was set up — to pre-empt such a situation from arising in the first place, by securing peace, no matter how uneasy, through checks and balances. But when the chief executive of a chief architect of the UN lies about the death of children and perpetrates war proudly and unashamedly, it would seem that time is nearly up for the organisation.
Where does this leave India? Ordinarily, the erosion of the UN ought to be welcomed by India and the Global South, given how structurally excluded they are from real decision-making at the body. This inequity has been reflected in other post-war multilateral institutions as well. But it is unclear how the Government of India actually thinks about these developments because, for the most part, it has chosen to remain conspicuously silent.
Now, silence can certainly be a weapon when used carefully. By not saying much and playing both sides, it has been argued that India is trying to protect its diaspora in the Gulf, hang on to an on-again, off-again relationship with the US, ensure that it can continue to secure safe passage for its ships through the Strait of Hormuz, keep buying oil from Russia, and count on Israel as its trusted military partner. All of these are weighty transactional justifications for not saying much.
But transactionalism alone at the time of an immoral war comes at a cost — ending up on the wrong side of history. There is one truth that is staring India and the world in the face — the deaths of at least 175 children. The immediate cause of death may be a misguided missile, but the real cause is a war that has violated every single canon of international law and an international order that has done little to stop it. It is time for every nation hitherto excluded from real decision-making in this world order to ensure justice to the families of the victims by working towards a complete reorientation of the institutional architecture of the UN. A real tragedy is an opportunity for real change.
In the throes of another tragedy, another nation took up the gauntlet. It was 1943, and as World War II neared its end, the ascendant nations, in a cruel irony, chose Tehran as the venue for their summit. The then president of the US, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a meeting with his counterparts, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill, declared that they, along with Chiang Kai-shek, were the “four policemen” of the world who would prevent a future war from occurring. This meant investing themselves with expansive military powers, and backing it up with a veto at the international high table, the Security Council of the yet-to-be-formed UN. That act in Tehran secured American hegemony for the rest of the 20th century and well into the 21st. Today, not very far away from where Roosevelt made this declaration, Zahra, Mahdis, and Hananeh are dead because the self-appointed lead policeman of the world appears to have turned his gun on those he had promised to protect.
At a moment like this, silence is not survival; it is simply waiting for the policeman to go rogue once again. Both India’s strategic interests and civilisational ethos demand more and demand better. As Swami Vivekananda said, “Tell the truth boldly, whether it hurts or not. If the truth is too much for intelligent people and sweeps them away, let them go, the sooner the better.”
Arghya Sengupta is Research Director, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. Views are personal