The absence of a genuine military ally for Iran has been one of the key factors behind the unfavorable transformation of the deterrence regime and the resulting weakening of the deterrent effect against violations of international law.

This was stated on March 2 by Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary and lecturer at the Moscow State University branch in Yerevan, Armen Martirosyan, at a roundtable discussion titled "Events in Iran and the Destruction of International Law."

According to him, the problem of international law enforcement is primarily rooted in the anarchic nature of the international system. "In turn, the anarchic character of this system is linked to the absence of a supranational arbiter holding a monopoly on legitimate coercion comparable to that of a modern sovereign state within its own political space," Martirosyan said. In such conditions, he continued, deterrence regimes acquire special importance — a combination of military-political, allied, economic, technological, and other factors that partially compensate for the absence of a global "order enforcer." It is precisely these deterrence regimes that raise the cost of violating international legal norms to a level at which ignoring them becomes politically, militarily, and economically disadvantageous.

"Deterrence regimes are dynamic in nature. They evolve in line with the transformation of states' military-political, economic, demographic, and technological capabilities, as well as their interests, intentions, and threat perceptions. The existence, strength, and reliability of military alliances plays a significant role," Martirosyan noted. The military escalation surrounding Iran, he emphasized, vividly illustrates the growing divergence between the normative logic of international law and the practical functioning of modern deterrence regimes.

Martirosyan recalled that Donald Trump made no secret from his first day in office that his decisions on the use of military force would be guided not so much by international legal frameworks as by calculations of strategic advantage and deterrence mechanisms. In his approach, compliance with or disregard for international law is determined primarily by the balance of expected benefits and potential costs, rather than by the normative obligation of law as such. This logic, he continued, is also evident in US domestic policy, where Trump systematically tests the limits of institutional constraints, disregarding both formal procedures and informal standards of political culture whenever he encounters insufficient resistance.

"It appears that in making decisions on Iran in 2025, the calculation was that the political, military, and diplomatic cost of striking would be lower than the cost of inaction. A similar logic can be seen in other episodes of his foreign policy behavior: if an action entails no serious costs, it becomes established as acceptable practice. A clear example is the situation in Venezuela," he noted.

For comparison, Martirosyan pointed to attempts to pressure Greenland, which encountered a far more robust deterrence regime shaped by the consolidated position of Denmark and its European partners. "This shows that the limits of what is permissible in contemporary international politics are defined not so much by formal norms as by the expected cost of violating them," he said, adding that the current situation clearly demonstrates that the effectiveness of a deterrence regime critically depends on whether the potential victim of aggression has military allies and on their willingness to honor their alliance commitments. Iran had none.