Witness videos captured Iranian projectiles soaring over Tel Aviv as sirens blared and Israeli interceptors launched. Residents could be heard shouting as one of the missiles appeared to break apart into dozens of smaller projectiles.
The Gulf states have spent years trying to broker peace between Iran and the West: Qatar brokered nuclear talks, Oman provided back-channel diplomacy, and Saudi Arabia maintained direct dialogue with Iran through 2024 and into 2025. Iran attacked them anyway. The idea that the Gulf states have a responsibility, a moral one, to protect Iran from the consequences of its actions because of good neighbourliness is now grotesque in context. Iran did not return good neighbourliness. Iran returned ballistic missiles.
Iran’s position is based on three propositions. First, that Iran acted in lawful self-defence pursuant to Article 51 of the UN Charter; that host countries relinquished territorial sovereignty by allowing US military bases on their territory; and that the definition of aggression in Resolution 3314 justifies the attack on those bases as lawful military objectives. Each of these propositions is legally flawed, factually skewed, and tactically wrong. Collectively, they add up to a legal argument that, if accepted, would ensure that the Gulf is permanently destabilised, the basic principles of international law are destroyed, and, in a curious twist, the very security threats that Iran is reacting to are reinforced.
The UN Charter, in Article 51, permits the use of force only in self-defence against an “armed attack”, and this term is not defined by reference to the state invoking it. The International Court of Justice, in cases such as Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States) (1986) and Oil Platforms (Iran v. United States) (2003), has interpreted the requirement of an “armed attack” under Article 51 of the UN Charter restrictively. The Court distinguished between the most grave forms of the use of force, which qualify as armed attacks triggering the right of self-defence, and less grave uses of force that do not. Accordingly, not every use of force, such as minor incidents or limited military activities, amounts to an armed attack. In this light, the mere presence of foreign military bases in Gulf states, maintained for decades under defence agreements with host governments, would not in itself constitute an armed attack against Iran.
Necessity and proportionality are also part of customary international law, requiring that self-defence be necessary and proportional. Iran has not demonstrated either. Targeting the territory of other sovereign Arab states in response to the policy decisions of the United States is neither necessary, since diplomatic and United Nations avenues are still available, nor proportional, since it imposes military consequences on states that are not a party to any conflict with Iran.
Critically, Article 51 also has a mandatory procedural element, in that any state employing self-defence is immediately required to notify the Security Council. Iran has consistently evaded this requirement in each of its escalatory actions. While this may seem to be a minor element, it is in fact the means by which the international community is able to verify and check self-defence claims. A state that evades this requirement is not employing Article 51. It is exploiting the language of Article 51.
The provision of Article 3(f) of the Annex to United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3314 (XXIX) (1974) states that an act of aggression includes the “action of a State in allowing its territory, which it has placed at the disposal of another State, to be used by that other State for perpetrating an act of aggression against a third State”. Iran could rely on this provision to hold the Gulf states that host United States military bases liable for any act of aggression committed from their territories against Iran. Nevertheless, the mere presence of military bases is not sufficient to hold them to be lawful military objectives; this will depend on their actual contribution to military activities against Iran based on the rules of international humanitarian law.
Thus, such an Iranian reading would be wrong on three distinct legal grounds.
First, Resolution 3314 is definitional in nature. The resolution was adopted to assist the Security Council in determining when aggression has taken place, not to confer upon states the unilateral power to punish states deemed to have committed aggression through the use of force. The resolution itself, in Article 2, asserts the power of the Security Council to make the determination of what constitutes aggression. The self-application of Article 3(f) of the resolution is therefore bypassed altogether.
Second, Article 3(f) speaks of the active launching of an attack, not the passive hosting of a military base. The legal distinction is fundamental. A state, in signing a defence treaty with another and hosting the latter’s troops on its soil, is engaging in a measure of sovereignty. A state, actively launching, coordinating, or enabling military strikes against a third party, is engaged in a different matter altogether. Iran has not credibly shown this latter case. The presence of US troops or bases in the Gulf has been a fact for decades, and this has not constituted armed aggression against Iran under any legal standard.
Third, even if Article 3(f) were applicable, the appropriate course would be to bring the matter to the Security Council, not to launch unilateral military strikes. General Assembly resolutions do not override the Charter. Iran cannot rely upon a non-binding resolution defining terms to override the Chapter VII requirements for the use of force or the clear criteria of Article 51.
Iran, in invoking the principle of good neighbourliness, asks the Arab Gulf states to deny the United States basing rights. Good neighbourliness is a two-way principle, and it does not allow for interference in the internal affairs of other states, certainly not interference in the decisions of other states simply because they are deemed inconvenient to the interfering state. All UN states possess the inherent right to conclude defence treaties with whomever they choose, and this is so regardless of the opinion of their neighbours.
The asymmetry of Iran’s position is striking and self-disqualifying. Iran itself has active military relationships with Russia and China. Iran arms, finances, trains, and supports the activities of non-state military actors in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force operates openly in various states, and this has been extensively documented in United Nations Panels of Experts reports, as well as other international monitoring reports. According to the standards that Iran applies to the Gulf states, any state that hosts the activities of the IRGC, the transfer of Iranian arms, or the coordination of Iranian proxies on its soil would be engaging in aggression against third parties. Iran will not accept this principle when it is applied to itself. A legal principle that is unacceptable to the party to whom it would be applied is not a legal principle at all; it is a political tool.
From the perspective of international relations theory, Iran’s position follows the logic of offensive realism, which seeks to remove the external balancing architecture of regional neighbours by claiming it to be hostile in nature. However, this approach is empirically self-defeating.
Under balance of threat theory, states react to offensive capability, geographic proximity, and aggressive intentions. Iran’s doctrine, in asserting the right to strike any state that hosts forces it perceives as a threat, drives each and every threat variable to maximum levels for each and every state in the region. The obvious consequence, evident in the data, is that the states in the region and external powers are becoming more, rather than less, securely integrated. The Fifth Fleet’s permanent base in Bahrain, the UAE’s negotiations over F-35s, Saudi Arabia’s deployments of THAADs, and Qatar’s expansion of the Al Udeid base are reactions to Iran’s escalation, not causes of it.
From the perspective of constructivism, the legitimacy of a legal argument is also partly based on the normative credibility of the state that presents the argument. The record of Iran’s compliance with IAEA regulations, including the enrichment of uranium to a purity level of 60 percent or more in 2023–2024, interference with inspections, the removal of monitoring cameras, and the overall violation of the non-proliferation regime, has undermined the credibility of the state significantly. A state that is itself a violator of the legal regime cannot claim the role of a law-abiding state seeking protection under the norms of the legal regime.
Iran’s legal rationale was always theoretically wrong. What has occurred since February 28, 2026, has made Iran’s actions morally and politically wrong. Iran did not simply target US military assets. The reality of the situation is now documented and undeniable. Ballistic missiles and drones were launched against Gulf states in the opening days of the conflict. This marked the first time one actor had simultaneously attacked all six GCC states. Iran escalated its attacks in deliberate stages. Day 1: Iranian missiles were fired against military bases. Day 2: Iranian missiles were fired against civilian infrastructure and airports. Day 3: Iranian missiles were fired against the energy sector. Days 3 and 4: The US Embassy in Riyadh was attacked by Iran. International airports in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Kuwait were attacked by Iranian missiles, resulting in the suspension of flights throughout the region. Videos from Bahrain documented an Iranian Shahed drone attacking an apartment building. This is not self-defence. This is the collective punishment of sovereign nations that went to extraordinary lengths to avoid the conflict.
The rationale provided by Iran falls flat when one considers the actions Iran itself took. Its doctrine held that only targets involved in the preparation or launch of an attack against Iran were legitimate targets. Civilian airports are not military bases. Hotels in Palm Jumeirah are not military command centres. An apartment complex in Manama is not a weapons storage facility. By Iran’s own stated legal rationale, none of these targets was legitimate, yet they were attacked. This was not a legal doctrine at all; it was a pretext for coercion, and the conduct of war revealed this to be the case.
Today is the eighth day of the American-Israeli axis of aggression against Iran. In a flagrant violation of Iran’s territorial integrity and national sovereignty, they have launched, as of Saturday 28 February, an unprovoked, unwarranted act of aggression against my country. They started this merciless aggression by targeting Iran’s Supreme Leader’s compound at the heart of the capital, Tehran. The leader, also a highly respected Shia religious jurist across the region and beyond, was martyred along with a number of his family members, including his 14-month-old granddaughter on the 10th day of the holy month of Ramadan.
At the same time, they launched massive air and missile strikes across Iran against military and civilian infrastructure. In just one case, they struck an elementary school in Minab, south-western Iran, where 165 innocent schoolgirls and 26 teachers were brutally slaughtered.
It is now clear that the US/Israeli targeting of this elementary school was deliberate and pre-planned. A detailed investigative report, based on satellite imagery, strike patterns, and geolocation analysis, has demonstrated that the attack directly struck the civilian school building during class hours. The purpose was to preoccupy Iran’s armed forces and emergency response capacity so that the aggressors could subsequently target other strategic sites.
The military aggression continues, and many civilian sites have been targeted, resulting in massive loss of innocent life and destruction of civilian infrastructure.
This renewed aggression was imposed on the Iranian nation while Iran and the United States were engaged in a diplomatic process. The foreign minister of Oman, acting as mediator, had announced that “significant progress” had been achieved in the latest round of negotiations on Thursday 26 February in Geneva.
This attack represents yet another betrayal of diplomacy and demonstrates that the US has zero respect for the basics of diplomacy. Despite being fully aware of the hostile intentions of the United States and the apartheid regime of Israel, Iran once again entered into negotiations to leave no room for doubt before the international community – to demonstrate the legitimacy of the Iranian people’s cause and to expose the baselessness of any pretext for aggression. These events show that the United States does not truly believe in diplomacy and instead seeks to impose its will on other nations.
The Iranian nation, proud and resilient, has proven that it does not yield to threats or foreign intervention. The millennia-old history of Iranian civilisation bears witness to the fact that Iranians have never bowed to aggression or domination.
For example, about 900 years ago, Farid al-Din Attar — one of the greatest poets in Iranian history — recounts in his book Tadhkirat al-Awliya that when Bayazid Bastami uttered the ecstatic phrase, “Subhani, ma a‘zama sha’ni” (“Glory be to me, how great is my station”), some accused him of heresy and attacked him with knives. Yet, as the story goes, with every stab, instead of Bayazid bleeding, it was the attackers’ own bodies from which blood flowed.
Iran is like Bayazid in this story. History shows that despite every blow struck against it, it is ultimately the aggressors — the ones who wield the knives — who are erased, while Iran endures and remains. This is what can be called the theory of Iran’s continuity amid super-crises and foreign aggression — a pattern repeatedly demonstrated throughout the many invasions and attacks Iran has endured over the past several centuries.
The airstrikes carried out by the Zionist regime and the United States against Iran constitute a violation of Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations and amount to a clear act of armed aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran. United Nations experts stated in their statement on March 4 that this act of aggression is “unlawful”. Furthermore, the assassination of the Supreme Leader and other Iranian officials represents a manifest violation of the immunity of state officials and of international conventions, including the 1973 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons.
Responding to this aggression is Iran’s lawful and legitimate right under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations. The Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran will employ all necessary capabilities to counter this criminal aggression and repel the enemy’s hostility. This right shall continue until the aggression ceases and the matter is properly addressed by the United Nations Security Council. As the state acting in self-defence, Iran will determine the measures that are necessary and proportionate to this armed attack.
In exercising this right, Iran had no option but to target certain US military facilities in the region. These defensive operations are not directed against host countries but are undertaken solely in defence of Iran. The facilities targeted were used by the United States to prepare and launch military attacks against Iran.
Iran fully respects the territorial integrity and political independence of its neighbouring countries. Every state has a responsibility, under international law and the principle of good neighbourliness, not to allow its territory, airspace, or facilities to be used for acts of aggression against Iran. As expressly affirmed by the authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran, any point of origin, base, or territorial platform from which acts of aggression against Iran are initiated—irrespective of the state in which such forces may be stationed—shall, consistent with Article 3(f) of the Annex to General Assembly Resolution 3314 (XXIX) on the Definition of Aggression, be regarded as a lawful military objective in the exercise of Iran’s inherent right of self-defence under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations. We need concrete and objective assurances that no further aggression will originate from US facilities located within these countries.
Iran underscores the critical responsibility of the United Nations and its Security Council to take immediate action in response to this breach of international peace and security. We call upon the Secretary-General, the President of the Security Council, and its members to fulfill their duties without delay.
All Member States of the United Nations—particularly countries in the region and the Islamic world, members of the Non-Aligned Movement, and all governments committed to international peace and security—are expected to condemn this act of aggression and to take urgent and collective measures in response. States must exercise vigilance and not be drawn into the designs of the aggressors.
Our message to the international community is clear: these acts of aggression and the ongoing harrowing crimes signal an unprecedented erosion of the international legal order. Inaction in the face of such unlawful conduct will not only embolden the United States and the Israeli regime but will also inflict lasting and irreparable damage upon the foundations of the international legal order.
The world is at a critical juncture. It shall decide whether it wants to be ruled by merciless bullying and force or whether it wants to save the rule of law from vanishing.
This will not be the last unlawful resort to force unless the international community acts decisively and responsibly.
States must not adopt a policy of indifference and appeasement. Failure to uphold fundamental principles of international law is a recipe for a dark global dictatorship that will bury the United Nations and annihilate the very basic tenets of humanity.
Every nation, every Muslim, every person of human conscience, has a responsibility to act. The world must wake up before it is too late. Otherwise, similar acts of aggression and crimes will unfold within your own borders.
The Iranian nation is defending itself by all means. We fight back in this unjust brutal war of aggression against two nuclear-armed regimes.
This is an unjust war imposed on a civilization. History will judge you all. Those who choose to take sides with the aggressors as well as those who prefer to keep silent in the face of this brutal injustice will all be regarded as accomplices.
Be on the right side of history and oppose this cruel, unjust war.
“We stand with Israel.” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz scolded a pro-Palestinian protester at an election rally, angrily stating that Israel is fighting an existential struggle for its “right to live in freedom.”
When the United States and Israel launched their coordinated assault on Iran in the early hours of February 28, 2026, an operation Washington has named “Operation Epic Fury”, the Gulf states did not cheer. They watched with dread.
For years, they had invested enormous diplomatic capital in preventing precisely this moment. They had engaged Tehran, maintained embassies, and offered repeated assurances that their territories would not serve as launchpads against the Islamic Republic.
That Iran’s response has been to turn its missiles on these same neighbours is not only a strategic miscalculation of historic proportions, but is also a profound moral and legal failure that risks poisoning relations for generations to come.
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states did not arrive at this crisis as Iran’s enemies. They arrived as reluctant bystanders, having spent years threading a needle between Washington and Tehran with deliberate, often thankless, care.
Saudi Arabia chose dialogue in 2019 and pursued a full diplomatic rapprochement with Tehran. That process culminated in the landmark 2023 Chinese-brokered normalisation agreement and the reopening of embassies. Riyadh’s bet was that engagement, not confrontation, was the path to stability. Even as the current crisis mounted, Saudi Arabia explicitly confirmed to Iranian authorities that it would not permit its airspace or territory to be used to target Iran. The kingdom’s word was given. It was not honoured in return.
Qatar had invested years in mediation, serving as the indispensable interlocutor between Hamas and Israel, and between Iran and the United States. Doha hosted indirect nuclear talks and pleaded for diplomatic solutions when few others would.
Oman, for its part, served as the quiet conduit for the very negotiations that, as recently as the eve of the war, held out the slim hope of a deal. Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi voiced optimism that peace was “within reach” on the day before the bombs fell.
Across the GCC, governments gave repeated and public assurances to Iran and to the world that their territories would not be used to launch attacks against the Islamic Republic. These assurances were credible. They were substantive commitments backed by years of diplomatic engagement.
Iran itself tacitly acknowledged their sincerity: On March 5, Tehran issued a notable public expression of appreciation to Saudi Arabia for upholding its commitment not to allow its territory to be used against Iran. That acknowledgement makes Iran’s actions all the more contradictory and indefensible.
For these are not the actions of hostile neighbours. These are the actions of states that understood the neighbourhood they lived in and chose, repeatedly, the hard road of diplomacy.
Iran’s response has repaid years of Gulf good faith with a barrage more ferocious than anything directed at the countries that launched the war. Official statistics show that in the early days of the war, Iran fired more than twice as many ballistic missiles and approximately 20 times more drones at Gulf states than at Israel. Three people were killed and 78 were injured in the UAE alone; Saudi Arabia’s largest refinery was set ablaze; major airports across the Gulf were targeted; and Qatar’s Ras Laffan, a pillar of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply, was struck.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and a significant share of global LNG passes daily, sent immediate shockwaves through international markets. Iranian threats of attacks brought commercial shipping through the passage to a near-standstill, severing the artery that connects Gulf energy producers to the economies of Asia, Europe and beyond. With Saudi, Emirati and Qatari exports frozen in place and insurance markets in freefall, the spectre of a prolonged closure raised alarms not seen since the tanker wars of the 1980s, pushing the world measurably closer to an economic shock that no recovery playbook is designed to absorb.
Iran’s attacks on Gulf sovereign territory are not merely strategically misguided; they are illegal under international law. The Gulf states are not parties to the conflict between Iran, Israel and the United States. They did not authorise military operations against Iran from their soil. Targeting civilian infrastructure, airports, hotels, refineries and ports in states that are not combatants violates fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, including the prohibition on attacks against civilian objects and the requirement of distinction between military and civilian targets.
Tehran has sought to justify the attacks by arguing that the presence of US military bases on Gulf soil makes those states legitimate targets. This logic does not hold. The GCC states gave ironclad assurances to Iran, continuously and emphatically, both before the war and up to its very eve, that their territories would not be used to attack Iran. The GCC’s own extraordinary ministerial statement of March 1, 2026, made this explicit, noting that the attacks came “despite numerous diplomatic efforts by GCC countries to avoid escalation and their confirmation that their territories will not be used to launch any attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran”.
The joint GCC-European Union ministerial meeting of March 5 repeated this point. Iran’s own Deputy Foreign Minister Hamid Ghanbari told Al Jazeera that Iran “regrets any humanitarian loss caused by the current military escalation”, an implicit recognition that the attacks have caused harm that cannot be sanitised by strategic framing.
Qatar, whose outreach to Iran was among the most sustained and sincere of any Gulf state, issued what officials described as the strongest condemnation in the country’s history, calling the strikes “reckless and irresponsible.” The GCC Ministerial Council, convening in an emergency extraordinary session on March 1, issued a sweeping collective condemnation describing the attacks as “heinous” and a “serious violation of these countries’ sovereignty, good neighbourly principles, and a clear breach of international law and the UN Charter”.
The Council affirmed that member states “will take all necessary measures to defend their security and stability”, including the option of self-defence, language of a gravity rarely heard from the Gulf’s diplomatic establishment. The unanimity and sharpness of that collective voice reflect the depth of the betrayal felt across the region.
The strategic logic Iran is operating on – that attacking Gulf states will pressure Washington to end the war – is not only flawed in practice, it actively serves Israeli interests. By spreading the conflict to the Gulf, Tehran is doing precisely what Israel could not do alone: steering the war away from the Israeli-Iranian axis and transforming it into a confrontation between Iran and its Arab neighbours.
Every missile fired at Dubai or Doha or Riyadh shifts the narrative, pulls the Gulf states deeper into a conflict they sought to avoid, and weakens the very actors most capable of mediating a way out. This is a strategic miscalculation of the first order. The interest of the wider region lies in preventing Israel from emerging as the unchallenged hegemon of the Middle East, a scenario that becomes more likely, not less, the more Iran pushes its Arab neighbours out of their potential role as honest brokers and into the arms of a deeper security alignment with Washington. Iran, in targeting the Gulf, is not resisting the new regional order; it is inadvertently constructing it.
The most urgent imperative now is to act before the window closes. A ceasefire must be pursued proactively and without condition. Wars reach critical thresholds at which point each side becomes so committed to its position, its sacrifices, and its narrative of necessity that finding an exit becomes nearly impossible.
There are signs that the threshold is approaching. Iran has declared it will fight until the “enemy is decisively defeated”. The United States Senate failed to invoke war powers to restrain President Trump’s operations. Iran’s proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and militias in Iraq, are actively engaging in operations. Every passing day narrows the corridor of possibility.
What is needed, urgently, is a coordinated international effort to construct the off-ramps that neither Washington nor Tehran can build alone. This requires the engagement of every country in the vast geography that this war is already shaping: the Gulf states, whose energy infrastructure sustains much of the global economy; the Asian powers: China, India, Japan, South Korea, whose energy security, trade routes, and financial stability are directly imperilled by a prolonged Gulf conflict; the European states that depend on Gulf LNG and have long advocated for the diplomatic track; and African nations whose access to food and fuel runs through the Strait of Hormuz.
Qatar and Oman retain a unique and irreplaceable capacity to serve as interlocutors, as both have done in every prior moment of brinkmanship, Qatar as the indispensable mediator between rival parties, Oman as the trusted back-channel between Tehran and the West.
China, which brokered the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement of 2023 and has deep economic stakes in both Tehran and the Gulf, has both incentive and leverage. European governments, which championed the nuclear deal for over a decade and now face the immediate pain of halted LNG shipments, have every reason, economic and strategic, to push back firmly against Washington’s course. A prolonged Gulf war not only starves Europe of energy, it drains the attention and resources Europe can least afford to divert while Russia remains undefeated on its eastern flank. A concerted global effort is needed to give both Washington and Tehran a face-saving exit, one that allows each to declare victory and step back before this conflict metastasises into a regional war that could dwarf Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
The Gulf states have demonstrated, through years of patient, continuous diplomacy, that good neighbourliness with Iran was their preferred choice. Iran has responded to that choice with missiles. Tehran would be wise to remember that the Gulf states it is now bombarding are the same neighbours best placed to offer it a way out, through their mediation expertise and their global leverage. An off-ramp must be built, but the window to build it will not stay open indefinitely.
For a moment, Ireland threatened to run off into the night.
After Jacob Stockdale ended his five-year wait for an international try, Ireland celebrated a second try against Wales just 10 minutes into Friday’s Six Nations game when Jack Conan crashed over.
But the home support’s excitement at the possibility of a thumping turned to frustration when the try was ruled out for Tom O’Toole’s knock on.
It set up a nervy night for Ireland when their post-England euphoria was quickly forgotten as they set about keeping a stubborn and spirited Wales side quiet.
In their record away win over England, Ireland ruthlessly built up a 22-0 lead before the hosts replied.
On Friday, though, a hard-hitting Welsh defence stopped the hosts from building an insurmountable advantage.
And when asked for his observations, Ireland head coach Andy Farrell was quick to both praise Wales after they provided his side a more uncomfortable examination than England last time out.
“I actually thought Wales did fantastically well to stay in the game,” he said.
“Like Caelan [Doris, Ireland captain] said, if it goes to 14 points, it’s a different game you’re looking at, but they played tough, they hung on in there and kept it close on the scoreboard. I thought they were tremendous tonight.
“It was a proper Test match and for us to come away with a bonus-point win, we’d certainly take that with how the game unfolded, because it was a different game to the game that we played last time round.
Ireland beat Wales by a combined 46 points in their home Six Nations wins in 2022 and 2024.
But having already been denied a home bonus point by Italy in this campaign, Farrell again used the word “resilience” after they absorbed Welsh pressure in the second half with the score 19-17 before Jamie Osborne killed the game off.
Wins like at Twickenham come once every so often. But edging out Test slugfests is what makes a team – and Farrell recognises that.
“It doesn’t always go your own way in Test match rugby, especially when the other team turns up and plays like that,” he explained.
“I thought we were resilient in how we went about our business.
Getty ImagesWhile Farrell bemoaned Ireland’s inability to convert the type of chances they had gobbled up against England, there were positives.
Conan, who missed the England game because of illness, was outstanding and got his deserved try in the second half after his earlier one was chalked off.
Robert Baloucoune, one of the breakout stars of Ireland’s campaign, impressed again while Jamie Osborne produced another all-action display at full-back as he scored for the third game in a row.
Joe McCarthy and Josh van der Flier both made significant impacts off the bench – a theme for Ireland this year – while Jack Crowley scored a try and produced some lovely moments in attack which were offset by some dodgy goal-kicking.
“He was on the sideline for a while with his coat off, he was itching to get on,” Farrell said of McCarthy, whose adventurous burst down the left wing helped set up Osborne’s try.
“He got on and certainly made a difference. There were some great highlights within the game, one was Joe going down the touchline and kicking the ball.
Digging deep for a bonus-point win leaves Ireland with a chance of the title and the Triple Crown.
While they need results to go their way before reclaiming the championship, victory over Scotland in Dublin next week will clinch a fourth Triple Crown in the past five years.
Scotland, who aim to stun France and boost their own title hopes on Saturday, have not won the Triple Crown since 1990.
Even if France win the title at Murrayfield on Saturday, Ireland and Scotland are set up for an unmissable game in Dublin.
“We need to make the most of the extra day, as far as recovery is concerned, then we bounce into what’s going to be a special week for us,” said Farrell.
“Playing against Scotland, they’ll be relishing coming here I’m sure. It doesn’t get any bigger for us.
“It definitely would [be special], we should never take a Triple Crown for granted at all.
