Elijah J. Magnier is a Brussels‑based veteran war correspondent and senior political risk analyst with more than 37 years of experience covering the West Asia region, including Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Sudan, and Palestine. He holds a Master’s degree in Terrorism and Counter‑Terrorism and a PhD in policing and political science, and has contributed to major international research initiatives supported by institutions such as the OSCE, the German Marshall Fund, and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In this in-depth interview, Magnier analyzes the use of sanctions as a tool of hybrid warfare, the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza, the legal implications of Western arms transfers to Israel, and the ineffectiveness of international legal and accountability mechanisms. Drawing on his extensive field experience and his background in international relations analysis, he offers a rigorous assessment of how economic coercion, military doctrine, and information warfare intersect to undermine international humanitarian law and civilian protection.
The full transcript of this important exchange follows.
1. You have analyzed how sanctions function as a tool of hybrid warfare. From a strategic perspective, how does the US-led economic blockade against Iran systematically target civilian infrastructure (healthcare and aviation) to achieve political goals that could not be achieved through direct military confrontation? Can this be classified as a form of “collective punishment”?
From a military and intelligence perspective, the strategic purpose of a comprehensive sanctions regime is not only to degrade a state’s warfighting inputs, it is also to alter its political decision calculus by raising internal costs and constraining state capacity. In the Iranian case, US sanctions are structured around financial denial, shipping and insurance pressure, and restrictions on designated entities, with formal humanitarian carve outs for food, medicine, and medical devices. US Treasury guidance repeatedly states that humanitarian trade is authorised or exempt. Yet credible reporting and rights based documentation show that exemptions do not eliminate downstream effects. When major banks, insurers, and logistics providers face secondary sanctions exposure and compliance risk, they often over comply, which produces delays, shortages, and price shocks in medical supply chains. Human Rights Watch has documented this “chilling effect” in the health sector under maximum pressure.
Technically, aviation is a high leverage target because modern civil aviation depends on steady access to spare parts, maintenance certification, and safety related updates. Even when civilian aircraft are not the stated target, restrictions that isolate airlines and maintenance networks degrade safety and availability over time. That is strategically damagingbecause it affects connectivity, commerce, and public confidence without crossing the threshold of kinetic attack.
On classification, “collective punishment” is a specific legal concept, most clearly articulated in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and traditionally applied in situations of occupation or effective control over a protected population. Sanctions are not, as a matter of law, automatically classified as collective punishment. However, they can raise collective-punishment–type concerns when they are designed, calibrated, or implemented in a manner that foreseeably inflicts widespread harm on civilians as a means of coercing political outcomes, particularly where such harm is not narrowly connected to a concrete and legitimate military objective.
In the case of Iran, the scope, duration, and structure of the sanctions regime extend well beyond constraining specific military capabilities or illicit procurement networks. Their cumulative effect targets core civilian systems, including healthcare access, transportation, energy, and financial stability, with predictable humanitarian consequences. When civilian suffering becomes a central mechanism through which political pressure is expected to operate, the legal question shifts from intent to foreseeability and proportionality.
Moreover, the strategic objectives articulated in policy discourse surrounding Iran indicate that the sanctions regime is not limited to modifying discrete state behaviours, but is also aimed at inducing internal political change. In this context, civilian hardship functions not as an incidental side effect but as an anticipated pressure vector, premised on the assumption that sustained economic distress will fracture public support for the governing system and potentially facilitate regime transformation. This logic brings the sanctions regime uncomfortably close to the rationale underpinning prohibited collective punishment, even if it remains formally framed within the language of economic coercion rather than military force.
This distinction matters because international humanitarian and human rights law assess responsibility not solely on declared intent, but on the foreseeable consequences of policy design and implementation.
2. We are witnessing the systematic destruction of hospitals, schools, and shelters in Gaza. In your assessment, is this destruction merely “unintended collateral damage”—as often framed in Western political narratives— or is it a deliberate military doctrine designed to make the territory uninhabitable, thereby violating the fundamental principles of Distinction and Proportionality in International Humanitarian Law?
A sound technical assessment must distinguish between three analytical layers: target selection policy, intelligence quality and strike execution, and the operational environment itself, including population density, tunnel networks, co-location claims, and the presence of fighters near civilian objects. Under International Humanitarian Law, the decisive question is not whether civilian objects are struck, but whether the attacking force respected the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack. The International Committee of the Red Cross has repeatedly warned that these core principles are increasingly disregarded in contemporary conflicts.
The analytical significance emerges when destruction becomes systemic and patterned. When hospitals, schools, shelters, and humanitarian infrastructure are repeatedly struck over time, the technical question is no longer one of isolated error. It becomes necessary to assess whether those objects were demonstrably used for military purposes, or whether harm to civilians itself became an operational pressure mechanism intended to erode public endurance and turn the population against organised resistance. Such patterns can indicate either persistent intelligence failure combined with permissive proportionality thresholds, or a deliberate operational approach in which the degradation of civilian infrastructure is treated as militarily useful. In the case of Gaza, it is analytically defensible to describe this as a form of governance by destruction, where rendering civilian life non-functional is not incidental, but operationally instrumental.
For legal anchoring, the provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice in South Africa v Israel are particularly relevant. They indicate that, at a minimum, the risk of grave violations and irreparable harm was sufficiently serious to warrant urgent judicial intervention, including with respect to humanitarian conditions. This reinforces the conclusion that the collateral damage framing is not sufficient on its own to explain persistent and large-scale patterns of destruction. Compliance with International Humanitarian Law turns on evidence of targeting rationales, precautionary measures, and proportionality assessments, not on post hoc narrative justification.
Finally, from an international law perspective, the routine use of “collateral damage” as a justificatory device has taken on an Orwellian character. The term is increasingly employed to invert meaning, obscure responsibility, and normalise the killing of non-combatants and the destruction of protected civilian infrastructure. When language is used in this way, it does not clarify legality or operational necessity; it functions to evade accountability. International law does not recognise Orwellian reframing as a substitute for compliance.
3. Considering the continuous supply of heavy munitions by the US and European states to the Israel despite clear evidence of mass civilian casualties, where does “strategic alliance” end and “legal complicity in genocide” begin? How does this supply chain implicate Western capitals in the crimes committed on the ground?
Technically, the key distinction is between political alignment and legal responsibility. Under the law of state responsibility, a state can incur responsibility for aiding or assisting another state’s internationally wrongful act if it provides aid or assistance with knowledge of the circumstances, and the act would be wrongful if committed by the assisting state. In international criminal law, aiding and abetting liability generally turns on assistance that has a substantial effect and the requisite mental element, with jurisprudence emphasising substantial contribution.
Where the line starts to shift from “alliance support” to potential complicity is when several conditions converge: a sustained factual record of mass civilian harm and serious violations; a credible warnings from UN mechanisms, courts, or authoritative bodies that elevate risk; and a continued transfers of capabilities that are materially linked to the contested operations, without demonstrable risk mitigation or conditionality. UN experts have explicitly called for stopping arms transfers and warned about risk of complicity, particularly in light of the ICJ’s genocide related provisional measures.
Therefore, the more a supplier has visibility on patterns of use, and the more it maintains uninterrupted resupply of munitions and components that enable the campaign, the greater its legal and political risk footprint becomes. Supply chains, maintained throughout the genocide mainly by the US, Germany, the UK and other western nations, implicate capitals through licensing decisions, end use monitoring, intelligence sharing, and operational integration. Even absent intent to facilitate crimes, continued support in the face of clear risk can trigger duties of due diligence and prevention arguments, especially where genocide prevention obligations are asserted in international debate, even if final determinations remain for courts.
4. Western narratives often label regional Resistance movements as destabilizing actors. However, looking at the failure of the UN Security Council to stop the carnage, has the strategy of multi-front coordination (often referred to as the “Unity of Fronts”) effectively served as the only practical deterrent to prevent further massacres of civilians in the region?
Western narratives often frame regional resistance movements as inherently destabilising actors. From a legal standpoint, this framing is incomplete. International law does not grant a blanket right to violence, but it does recognise the right of peoples to self-determination, including resistance to foreign occupation. This principle is reflected in the UN Charter, General Assembly resolutions, and the broader corpus of decolonisation law. In this context, the primary source of instability is not the population resisting occupation, as in Palestine, southern Lebanon, or parts of Syria, but the persistence of occupation itself and the external support structures that sustain it.
From a military and strategic perspective, multi-front coordination, often described as the “Unity of Fronts,” functions as a deterrence-by-entanglement strategy. It complicates an adversary’s operational planning by creating concurrent threats across multiple domains and theatres, thereby raising the expected costs of escalation and limiting the adversary’s ability to achieve decisive outcomes in a single arena without triggering repercussions elsewhere. This approach alters escalation dynamics by expanding the range of signalling tools available to the resisting side, including proxy engagement, standoff fire, maritime pressure, and indirect disruption, rather than reliance on direct conventional confrontation.
In an environment where institutional deterrence has failed, notably due to paralysis at the UN Security Council, multi-front pressure can operate as a practical constraint on unilateral military campaigns. It does so by forcing resource dispersion, increasing air defence and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance burdens, and injecting uncertainty into adversary decision-making. However, it is important to be precise: this strategy is not, by itself, a humanitarian shield. While it can raise the political and military costs of large-scale offensives and thereby limit the scope of violence, it can also expand the conflict ecosystem and increase civilian exposure if escalation is poorly controlled.
The deterrent value of multi-front coordination therefore lies not in preventing violence categorically, but in shaping adversary behaviour by constraining freedom of action. Its effectiveness in reducing civilian harm depends on factors such as command discipline, escalation management, proportional response, and the adversary’s political risk tolerance. In the absence of effective international enforcement mechanisms, it may function as the only available form of deterrence, but it remains an inherently unstable substitute for lawful collective security.
5. As an expert in intelligence matters, how do you evaluate the use of “Human Rights” narratives by Western intelligence agencies to demonize independent nations? How does this weaponization of information prepare the ground for sanctions and justify the suffering of the Iranian people to the global public?
In intelligence and influence terms, “human rights narratives” are part of strategic communications and reputational warfare. They can function in different ways. First, as agenda setting, defining which actor is the violator and which actor is the enforcer of norms. Second, as coalition maintenance, aligning domestic and allied constituencies behind restrictive measures. Third, as legal and bureaucratic scaffolding, providing a justificatory record that supports sanctions designations, export controls, and financial restrictions.
In practice, governments often fuse multiple streams: NGO reporting, UN reporting, open source evidence, diplomatic cables, and classified assessments. The weaponisation risk is real when rights language is applied selectively, amplified against adversaries, and muted against partners, and when the humanitarian costs of sanctions are treated as acceptable pressure rather than harm to be minimised. A technical way to say this is: information operations do not need falsehoods to be weaponised, they can weaponise selectivity, framing, and omission. That is how public consent is engineered for coercive economic tools whose second order effects on civilians are foreseeable, even when humanitarian exemptions exist on paper.
6. Given the paralysis of international legal bodies due to US veto power, what strategic role can independent civil society and NGOs in the Global South play to document these war crimes effectively and pave the way for a new, post-hegemonic mechanism of justice?
If veto politics blocks Security Council action, which was the case for more than six times when the US protected Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity, the practical arena shifts to documentation, jurisdictional creativity, and coalition building. For NGOs and civil society in the Global South, the strategic role is to produce evidence that meets courtroom standards, not only advocacy standards. That means chain of custody protocols, secure storage, metadata preservation, witness protection practices, and triangulation across sources (satellite imagery, geolocated video, medical and morgue records, radio intercept logs where available, and contemporaneous command and policy statements). It also means building interoperability with international investigative models, including UN commissions, special rapporteur communications, and partnerships with specialised OSINT and forensic groups.
The pathway to “post hegemonic” justice is less about inventing a new court overnight and more about exploiting existing legal surfaces: universal jurisdiction cases in national courts, civil litigation and sanctions related disclosure mechanisms, corporate due diligence complaints, and international fact finding processes that preserve evidence for later criminal proceedings. The ICJ process, even at the provisional measures stage, and UN human rights reporting create authoritative reference points that can help standardise evidentiary narratives and trigger prevention duties arguments.
