The United States and Israel opened their war on Iran this weekend with a sudden strike on its longtime supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. While the war as a whole has been broadly denounced as illegal by critics who point to its lack of authorization from Congress or the United Nations Security Council, the ayatollah’s killing raises particular legal questions.

周末，美国与以色列对伊朗发动战争，突袭该国多年的最高领袖哈梅内伊。这场战争本身已被批评者普遍谴责为非法，他们指出其未获美国国会或联合国安理会授权，但击毙哈梅内伊一事引发了尤为特殊的法律疑问。

It is extraordinarily rare for a country to deliberately and openly kill the leader of another sovereign nation — even during legally uncontested wars. As a result, the question has rarely come up. A very rare precedent of sorts came in March 2003, when the Bush administration tried to kill Saddam Hussein on the cusp of the Iraq war, a conflict Congress had authorized — but that airstrike missed its target.

一国蓄意、公开地杀死另一个主权国家领导人的情况极为罕见——即便在法律上无争议的战争中也是如此。因此，相关法律问题极少出现。一个勉强算得上的罕见先例发生在2003年3月，布什政府在伊拉克战争爆发前夕试图击毙萨达姆·侯赛因（那场战争获得了国会授权），但空袭并未命中目标。

Asked for a detailed description of its legal views on the issue, the White House said in a statement that President Trump had “exercised his authority as commander in chief to defend U.S. personnel and bases in the region.” It described decades of misdeeds by Iran but did not specifically address the killing of its leader.

当被要求详细说明政府在这一问题上的法律立场时，白宫在一份声明中表示，特朗普总统“为保护该地区美方人员及基地而行使了最高统帅权”。声明列举了伊朗数十年来的恶行，但并未专门就击毙伊朗领导人一事作出法律解释。

Here is a closer look.

以下是详细分析。

What happened?

发生了什么？

The United States under Mr. Trump and Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu jointly launched a war against Iran on Feb. 28 with a surprise strike on Iranian leadership, killing Ayatollah Khamenei, a hard-line Shiite cleric and Iran’s ruler for nearly four decades.

特朗普领导下的美国与内塔尼亚胡领导下的以色列于2月28日联合发动对伊朗的战争，突袭伊朗领导层，击毙担任伊朗最高领袖近四十年的强硬什叶派神职人员哈梅内伊。

The C.I.A. had been tracking his movements and passed his whereabouts to Israel, which carried out the strike that killed him, according to officials. The two countries are said to have moved up their plans for the war to take advantage of the window of opportunity.

据官员透露，美国中央情报局一直在追踪哈梅内伊的行踪，并将其位置通报以色列，由以色列实施了致命打击。据称，美以两国为抓住这个短时间内出现的机会，提前了战争计划。

What was Khamenei’s status?

哈梅内伊的身份是什么？

The ayatollah was a civilian — not a uniformed member of the Iranian military — but he was also the supreme leader of Iran’s armed forces, just as Mr. Trump is a civilian who is also the commander in chief of the American military. This hybrid status creates a complication.

哈梅内伊是文职人员，并非伊朗军队现役军人，但他同时是伊朗武装部队最高领袖，正如特朗普身为文职却也是美军总司令一样。这种双重身份造成了法律上的复杂性。

It is generally agreed that in wartime, a country’s military commanders are lawful targets. It is also generally agreed that civilian officials with no military functions — like a health minister — are not lawful targets unless they are directly participating in hostilities.

普遍共识是，战争期间一国军事指挥官属于合法打击目标。同样普遍的共识是，不承担军事职能的文职官员——如卫生部长——不属于合法目标，除非他们直接参与敌对行动。

2024年，哈梅内伊在德黑兰发表演讲。

A civilian leader who commands a military force is a messier situation. Still, under the laws of armed conflict, a civilian leader who controls the military is likely to be a legitimate military target in an active war whether he is interpreted as being part of his country’s armed forces or as a civilian directly participating in hostilities, legal experts said.

指挥军队的文职领导人则处于更模糊的地带。但法律专家表示，根据武装冲突法，控制军队的文职领导人在实际战争中很可能属于合法军事目标，无论将其界定为该国武装力量一部分，还是直接参与敌对行动的文职人员。

What about targeting former leaders?

针对前领导人的打击如何界定？

Reports from Iran say an airstrike has also killed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who served as Iran’s president from 2005 until 2013. Based on the presently available facts, he would seem unambiguously to have been a civilian who was not directly participating in hostilities. It is not clear what legal theory would support any deliberate targeting of him as lawful.

 来自伊朗的报道称，2005年至2013年担任伊朗总统的马哈茂德·艾哈迈迪-内贾德也在空袭中身亡。根据目前已知事实，他显然属于未直接参与敌对行动的文职人员。目前尚不清楚有何种法律理论可以支持将其蓄意列为打击目标的合法性。

When did the armed conflict begin?

武装冲突何时开始？

It began with the very strike that killed Ayatollah Khamenei, which complicates the question of whether he was a lawful military target at the time of the strike. In peacetime, it would be murder to kill a member of a foreign military or any government official who is not engaged in an imminent armed attack.

冲突始于击毙哈梅内伊的那次空袭本身，这使得判断他在遇袭时是否为合法军事目标的问题变得复杂。在和平时期，杀死未参与迫在眉睫的武装攻击的外国军人或政府官员均构成谋杀。

The United Nations Charter, a treaty the United States has ratified, provides that a nation may not use force on the sovereign territory of another country without its consent, a self-defense rationale or the authorization of the U.N. Security Council.

得到了美国批准的《联合国宪章》规定，除非经当事国同意、出于自卫理由或获得联合国安理会授权，任何国家不得在另一国主权领土使用武力。

周六德黑兰的爆炸。

“Whether or not an individual would be a lawful military target as a matter of the law of armed conflict, if the strike itself violates the U.N. Charter, that strike is illegal,” said Rebecca Ingber, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law and a former senior State Department lawyer. “A state can’t backfill a justification for killing a head of state by unlawfully starting an armed conflict.”

“无论根据武装冲突法，某个人是否属于合法军事目标，如果袭击本身违反《联合国宪章》，那么这次袭击就是非法的，”卡多佐法学院教授、前国务院高级律师丽贝卡·英格伯说。“一个国家不能先非法发动武装冲突，事后再为杀死他国国家元首寻找正当理由。”

Was there an ‘imminent’ threat?

是否存在“迫在眉睫”的威胁？

To invoke self-defense, the U.N. Charter requires there to be an armed attack. Customary international law broadly accepts that this includes a right to use force against an imminent threat of an armed attack, which in turn raises the question of what counts as imminent.

《联合国宪章》规定，援引自卫权需存在武装攻击行为。国际法惯例上大致承认，这包括对迫在眉睫的武装攻击威胁使用武力的权利，而这又引出何为“迫在眉睫”的问题。

Since the attack, the Trump administration has gestured toward two versions of this argument. One appears to rely on a very elastic definition, and one arguably appeared to rely on circular reasoning.

袭击发生后，特朗普政府提出了两种版本的相关理由。一种似乎依赖非常弹性的定义，另一种则被认为属于循环论证。

In a video on Saturday, Mr. Trump declared that the objective was “to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.” But he did not suggest that Iran was on the cusp of launching an armed attack before the strikes, instead saying it would be intolerable to allow it to build a nuclear weapon and long-range missiles.

特朗普在周六的一段视频中宣称，行动目标是“通过消除伊朗政权带来的迫在眉睫的威胁，来保卫美国人民”。但他并未表明伊朗在袭击前即将发动武装攻击，而是声称绝不能容忍伊朗发展核武器与远程导弹。

On Monday, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser, told reporters that “there absolutely was an imminent threat.” He said the United States believed Israel was going to attack Iran, and if it did so, Iran would attack American bases, so the country joined Israel’s attack “proactively, in a defensive way, to prevent them from inflicting higher damage.”

周一，国务卿兼国家安全顾问鲁比奥对记者表示，“绝对存在迫在眉睫的威胁。”他称，美国认为以色列将攻击伊朗，而一旦以色列动手，伊朗就会袭击美军基地，因此美国“以预防性、防御性的方式”加入以色列的袭击，“以防止伊朗造成更大破坏。”

美国国务卿鲁比奥周一在国会大厦向国会领导人通报伊朗袭击事件前。

Does the administration care about international law?

本届政府是否在意国际法？

There is reason to believe it does not care about this part of it.

有理由认为，政府在这方面并不在意。

The American military’s invasion of Venezuela in January to arrest President Nicolás Maduro also appears to have violated the U.N. Charter. But a memo by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said the charter did not matter for the purposes of that operation. It cited past opinions by executive branch lawyers who claimed that as a matter of domestic law, the president has constitutional power to act in ways that conflict with the Charter.

今年1月，美军入侵委内瑞拉逮捕总统马杜罗，此举同样似乎违反《联合国宪章》。但司法部法律顾问办公室的一份备忘录称，该行动无需考虑宪章条款。备忘录援引了行政部门律师过往的观点，称根据美国国内法，总统拥有采取与《宪章》相抵触的行动的宪法权力。

Does it matter which country killed Khamenei?

由哪国击毙哈梅内伊是否重要？

Not under the doctrine of state responsibility, if reporting about the behind-the-scenes decision-making is accurate. According to the doctrine, if a country knowingly helps another nation commit a violation of international law, both are considered culpable for the wrongful act. By that logic, if killing the ayatollah was unlawful, and if the United States knew or intended for Israel to target him when it passed along his location, the United States shares legal responsibility.

如果有关幕后决策的报道属实，则不属于国家责任原则范畴。根据这一原则，如果一国故意协助另一国实施违反国际法的行为，两国均应对该不法行为承担责任。按照这一逻辑，如果击毙哈梅内伊属于非法行为，且美国在向以色列通报其位置时知晓或意图让以色列将哈梅内伊列为目标，那么美国需承担共同法律责任。

Was starting the war legal, domestically?

在国内层面，发动战争是否合法？

The Constitution vests the power to declare war with Congress. But especially since World War II, presidents of both parties have unilaterally committed U.S. troops into limited combat situations on their own. Executive branch lawyers claim that this is lawful if the anticipated nature, scope and duration of an operation fall short of a “war” in the constitutional sense.

美国宪法将宣战权授予国会。但自二战以来，两党总统均曾单方面将美军投入有限作战行动。行政部门律师主张，如果一项行动的预期性质、规模和持续时间未达到宪法意义上的“战争”标准，则属合法。

Despite those accumulating precedents, since the War Powers Resolution of 1973, presidents have sought prior authorization for major wars: the Persian Gulf war, Iraq and the war against Al Qaeda that began in Afghanistan. Mr. Trump’s war with Iran appears likely to be the most significant unilateral presidential military action since the law’s enactment.

尽管先例不断累积，但自1973年《战争权力决议》通过以来，总统发动重大战争均事先寻求国会授权：海湾战争、伊拉克战争以及始于阿富汗的针对基地组织的战争。特朗普对伊朗发动的战争很可能成为该法案颁布以来总统采取的最重大单边军事行动。

What about the assassination ban?

刺杀禁令如何适用？

After an inquiry in the 1970s that brought to light C.I.A. links to Cold War plots to kill foreign leaders, known as the Church Committee investigation, President Gerald Ford issued an executive order that banned “assassinations.” The ban is now part of Executive Order 12333, which states: “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.” The order does not define what types of killings count.

20世纪70年代，一场调查——名为“丘奇委员会调查”——揭露了中情局参与冷战时期暗杀外国领导人的阴谋。此后福特总统发布行政命令，禁止“刺杀”。该禁令如今已纳入第12333号行政命令，其中规定：“任何受雇于或代表美国政府行事的人员，不得从事或密谋从事刺杀。”该命令未界定何种杀戮行为属于刺杀。

Both before and after Congress authorized the war against Al Qaeda in 2001, the executive branch took the position that this ban would not bar the targeted killings of high-level terrorist leaders as self-defense or part of the armed conflict. Still, Qaeda operatives are not leaders of sovereign states.

在2001年国会授权对基地组织开战之前和之后，行政部门均坚持立场，认为该禁令不禁止出于自卫或作为武装冲突一部分而定点清除高级恐怖主义领导人。但基地组织成员并非主权国家领导人。

In 2020, Mr. Trump ordered an airstrike in Iraq that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, a top Iranian military commander. The visible portions of a heavily redacted Justice Department memo that blessed that strike do not address the assassination ban, but the memo accused him of orchestrating years of operations that killed American troops deployed in Iraq.

2020年，特朗普下令在伊拉克发动空袭，击毙伊朗高级军事指挥官卡西姆·苏莱曼尼少将。司法部为该袭击背书的备忘录经过大量涂黑，可见部分并未提及刺杀禁令，但备忘录指控苏莱曼尼策划了多年来导致驻伊美军伤亡的行动。