On Thursday, the International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran told the United Nations Human Rights Council that it had found reasonable grounds to believe the United States was behind two military strikes on a school and a sports facility in Iran in February, and that these strikes constituted war crimes. The Mission also found that Iranian authorities had committed crimes against humanity during their crackdown on anti-government protests. Both findings were delivered to the Human Rights Council. Both will be formally submitted. Neither will produce an arrest warrant, a prosecution or a defendant. The court that would do that is being dismantled.

Reasonable grounds is a legal standard. It is not a verdict. It is the threshold at which an international body has concluded that the evidence available is sufficient to believe that a crime was committed and that the identified party is responsible. The IFFM applied that standard to the strikes on the school and the sports facility in February and concluded: reasonable grounds. The war that began on February 28 struck a school and a sports facility. The Mission found reasonable grounds to believe this constituted war crimes. Seven months later, this finding is on the record of the United Nations.

DiploPolis has been covering the accountability gap since the war began. 'A Home on Qeshm. No Court to Say So.' documented the New York Times confirmation of a 2,000-pound Mark 84 bomb on a residential building, with CENTCOM calling it a successful strike and no court available to examine the gap between the description and the evidence. 'Iran Asked the ICC. The ICC Is Being Dismantled.' documented the Red Crescent's request to investigate the Sirik wedding strike as a war crime, made to a court that was simultaneously being taken apart by US sanctions. The IFFM's findings this week are the most authoritative such determination yet: an international body established by the UN Human Rights Council, examining the February strikes that opened the war, has found reasonable grounds for war crimes.

The findings land in UNGA week. Trump is meeting Gulf leaders on Tuesday. Netanyahu wants to meet Trump but cannot get on the schedule. Iran's president is at the General Assembly. Abbas has been denied a visa for the second consecutive year. The war's diplomatic track runs through New York this week while its accountability track runs through Geneva, where the Human Rights Council sits and where the IFFM's findings will be formally presented. Both tracks are real. Neither has yet produced a result.

The IFFM also found that Iranian authorities committed crimes against humanity in their crackdown on anti-government protests. Both the US and Iran are named in the same report by the same Mission for acts that the Mission has found reasonable grounds to characterise as international crimes. Both governments have contested the Mission's jurisdiction. Neither has cooperated with its investigation. The findings were made without their cooperation.

Reasonable grounds. The phrase carries the weight of a legal system that cannot yet deploy its enforcement mechanisms because those mechanisms are being disassembled at the same time as the evidence they would examine is being produced. The ICC is being dismantled. The IG report confirmed the munitions depletion. The IFFM confirmed the war crimes threshold. The findings accumulate. The mechanisms to act on them do not. This is the accountability landscape at 203 days of war: the evidence is confirmed, the standard is met, the court is gone.