Research and development in criminal law and criminology

Research and development in criminal law and criminology

A Call for Criminal Law and Criminological Analysis of the U.S.–Israeli Aggression against Iran: From Patterns of Criminality to Models of Criminal Prosecution

Public Titles

Authors
SeyyedMostafa Mohaghegh Damad 1
mohammad darvishzade 2
1 Professor, Faculty of Law, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
2 President of the Iranian Law and Legal Research Institute and former Supreme Court Justice, Tehran, Iran
10.22034/jclc.2026.738761
Abstract
The 2026 U.S.–Israeli aggression against Iran raises a set of questions that extend beyond the conventional legal analysis of armed conflict and call for sustained engagement from criminal law and criminology. This editorial proposes a research agenda for examining the alleged violations through the conceptual and evidential frameworks of criminal responsibility, state criminality, victimology, and international criminal law. Its central concern is how the factual record of large-scale violence can be translated into legally cognisable evidence capable of establishing individual responsibility across different levels of political and military decision-making. The editorial develops this agenda around five interrelated fields of inquiry: the documentation and critical assessment of the aggression and its consequences; criminological analysis of patterns of state violence and victimisation; the attribution of criminal responsibility and the construction of viable models of prosecution; the liability of accomplices and facilitators and the jurisdiction of domestic courts; and the development of proportionate responses within the criminal justice system. Particular attention is given to attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, the destruction of cultural and religious sites, command responsibility, complicity, digital and satellite evidence, collective victimisation, reparations, and the relationship between punitive and restorative justice.
 
 
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