An Iranian holds a picture of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, who was killed in an airstrike in Iraq in January.
Photo: wana news agency/ReutersA top United Nations investigator condemned the U.S. killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January as unlawful, saying Washington failed to provide sufficient evidence that he posed an immediate threat to American interests to justify the drone strike.
Agnes Callamard, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, also deemed illegal Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes five days later, which targeted a base in Iraq housing U.S. troops.
“To the extent that evidence points to the U.S. and Iranian strikes being retaliations or reprisals, each would be unlawful,” the U.N. rapporteur said in a report focusing on the use of armed drones, and in particular the killing of Gen. Soleimani, that she is set to present on Thursday in Geneva, a copy of which was seen by The Wall Street Journal.
As head of a clandestine wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responsible for military operations abroad, Gen. Soleimani ordered dozens of attacks across the Middle East, including on U.S. troops and interests. The U.S. designated him a terrorist in 2005.
Agnes Callamard, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, deemed the U.S. killing of Gen. Soleimani as unlawful.
Photo: fabrice coffrini/Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesAfter the U.S. on Jan. 3 struck Gen. Soleimani’s convoy in Baghdad with a drone, killing him and several others, including a top Iraqi militia commander, White House officials said they had acted in self-defense.
“Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel, but we caught him in the act and terminated him,” President Trump said on Jan. 3.
However, in a letter submitted to the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 8, which formed the basis for the U.N. in determining the legality of the strike, the U.S. didn’t mention any imminent threat and pointed solely to past incidents, according to Ms. Callamard’s report.
Several of the referenced attacks were conducted by Iraqi militias that are funded and trained by the Revolutionary Guard unit headed by Gen. Soleimani, but the U.N. report said support for such groups didn’t constitute an armed attack by Iran. Other incidents include Iranian attacks on vessels in the Persian Gulf and on Saudi oil facilities, in which none of the targets were American.
The spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department described the report as “tendentious and tedious” and said it undermined human rights by “giving a pass to terrorists.”
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The department maintains Mr. Soleimani was planning further attacks in Iraq and throughout the region, and on Wednesday defended the strike as consistent with international law and the U.S. right to self-defense.
“The strike in Iraq was necessary to achieve these purposes and, given its limited nature, proportionate to that aim,” a state department official said.
“I can only work and analyze the facts on the basis of the information that is being made available by the United States to the Security Council,” Ms. Callamard said in an interview, responding to the State Department’s remarks. “They provided no proof whatsoever that Mr. Soleimani was planning an imminent attack.”
She said the definition of self-defense used by the U.S. to justify the drone strike against the general was in “complete contradiction” with international jurisprudence.
“International law is international. It is not American,” Ms. Callamard said.
Iran has tried to portray itself as the responsible international power in its confrontation with the U.S. after the Trump administration pulled out of an international deal to curb Iran’s nuclear activities in 2018. Iran in June issued a warrant to arrest Mr. Trump and 35 others over Gen. Soleimani’s killing, which it has labeled an act of terrorism, and asked Interpol for assistance in detaining them.
While largely symbolic, the arrest warrant was part of Iran’s efforts to cast the U.S. as a rogue state that doesn’t respect international conventions, violates its airspace with drones and uses unlawful methods to pressure Iran.
Iran itself has gradually breached and tested limits of the nuclear deal, drawing rebuke from other parties to the accord. Member states from the U.N. atomic agency board in June voted to condemn Iran for failing to cooperate with its probe of Tehran’s nuclear activities, giving the Trump administration new ammunition in its push to kill the deal.
Gen. Soleimani was one of Iran’s most powerful men, who oversaw Tehran’s shadow wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. He was also responsible for the country’s fight against Islamic State. He was a frequent visitor to Baghdad in the months before his killing.
Iran responded to Gen. Soleimani’s killing by launching a barrage of missiles targeting Iraqi bases that housed U.S. personnel. More than 100 U.S. troops suffered traumatic brain injuries from the attack. As Iranian air defenses were on high alert for an American retaliatory attack, its military mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet, killing all 176 people on board.
The report said the killing of Gen. Soleimani also violated the territorial integrity of Iraq.
It marked the first known incident in which a U.N. member state invoked self-defense as a justification for an attack against a state actor, rather than nonstate militant groups, in the territory of another state, the report added.
Ms. Callamard said she worried that other countries might use the U.S. precedent to go after other state actors outside declared armed conflicts.
“It opens the door to constant international warfare,” she said.
—Courtney McBride contributed to this article.
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Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com
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