Christopher Luxon hits back after Helen Clark brands Iran response a ‘disgrace’

Monday, 2 March 2026

PM Christopher Luxon has hit back at Helen Clark who called his government’s response to the situation in Iran a “disgrace”.

On Sunday, the government released a carefully worded statement which focused on condemning Iran. You can read it here.

In reply former PM Helen Clark called the response a “disgrace”.

“It knows full well that international law has been breached even though negotiations on Iran’s nuclear capability were underway,” she posted online.

This morning on Newstalk ZB, Luxon hit back at Clark saying: 'What is disgraceful is a regime that kills its own people they way it has'.

In this interview, Luxon again spoke carefully about the legality of the US/Israeli attacks focusing on the brutality of the Iranian regime.

The opposition reaction to the both the government’s stance and the attacks was mostly critical with Labour leader Chris Hipkins saying: “We recognise the courage of Iranians who have taken to the streets demanding change, at enormous personal risk and we condemn the serious human rights violations that have been perpetrated against them. Military escalation does not produce the stability the region needs,” he said.

“The attacks on Iran and the retaliatory strikes undermine international peace and security and put civilian lives at risk.”

Meanwhile on RNZ, Luxon refused to explicitly say whether New Zealand supports the Iran strikes or not.

Luxon was pressed on where New Zealand stands on the current situation.

After a back and forth between himself and host Corrin Dann, he subsequently said 'our position is the same as the Australian position'.

Asked if the strikes were the right thing to do morally, Luxon danced around the subject.

'Well, the strikes have actually removed a supreme leader who actually has been destabilising both the world and in terms of threatening peace and security in the globe.'

On RNZ, Clark also repeated her critique. 'The whole point of international law is to put rules around when force is legitimate.

'A strike is justified if there is an imminent threat of attack, which clearly there was not.'

Clark told RNZ the initial strikes by Israel and the US violated international law.

She said the New Zealand government only seemed interested in the Iranian retaliation and 'not looking at the reason for the retaliation, which was the attack by the United States and Israel.'

“What is concerning is when you see a government like the New Zealand one not stand up for the international system and international law.

“The assault on it has come not only from the United States obviously, but also from Russia with its totally unjustified, uh, invasions, two of them of, of Ukraine.”