As many Americans prepared to start the workweek, President Trump announced his intentions to destroy Iran’s electricity-generating stations and water-purifying plants should the regime fail to lift its blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.
“If for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched,’” Mr. Trump wrote on social media early Monday morning.
The president’s ultimatum is a contemptible departure from the restraint that most wartime presidents have strived for.The bombing campaign Mr. Trump described holds the potential to affect millions of Iranian civilians, inflicting long-term consequences on their access to water, electricity and other necessities. Such an attack order should never be given — in public or private.
His proposal, if acted upon, would almost certainly amount to a war crime. One of the central tenets of the laws that govern modern conflict is that the targeting of civilians is off limits in military campaigns. Customary law of war principles would prohibit infrastructure providing essential services to civilians from targeted obliteration.
Should the U.S. military act on an order from Mr. Trump to indiscriminately destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure, it will be a flagrant violation of the laws of armed conflict and international humanitarian law, said Robert Goldman, a law professor and the faculty director of the War Crimes Research Office at American University. “It’s wanton destruction that would bring about clear and foreseeable catastrophic effects on the civilian population,” Mr. Goldman said.
A military can justify its attacks on infrastructure when the facilities have a so-called dual use for both civilians and an adversary’s military. For instance, a bridge clearly benefits people in their daily commutes, but it can also be a vital artery to move troops and supplies in a war zone. A bridge can be legally destroyed under international law if it meets certain criteria in the way it’s being used by armed forces during active hostilities. But militaries can’t blow up every bridge inside the country they’re attacking.
Because the U.S. military now has near total control over Iranian airspace, there doesn’t appear to be a pressing need to wipe out every electrical station that might power the country’s remaining operating air defense radars, sensors or other equipment. Similarly, a desalination plant may provide water to Iranian bases and forces, but bombarding all desalination plants would most likely be disproportionate to the effect it could have on the 90 million people living in the country.
“Whether a power plant would constitute a military objective or civilian object would depend on the facts and circumstances, but the president’s categorical statement represents a threat to target even civilian objects regardless of the requirement for distinction, which would be a war crime,” said Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who is a specialist in the laws of war. He said the same would be true of oil wells and desalination plants, according to international humanitarian law that dictates avoiding civilian harm.
These acts would also be antithetical to how the American military sees itself — maintaining a moral standing that dates back to the Revolutionary War. The foreword of the Pentagon’s own Law of War Manual says, “The law of war is a part of our military heritage, and obeying it is the right thing to do.” It continues, “But we also know that the law of war poses no obstacle to fighting well and prevailing.”
Gen. Joseph Votel, who was commander of U.S. Central Command during Mr. Trump’s first term, said that adhering to the legal standards aligns with our national values. “It gives us credibility with our partners, with our own service members and citizens, and with civilians in those areas we must operate,” he said. And while the United States’ treatment of enemy combatants and of civilians during war is also far from perfect, American forces often do go to great lengths to mitigate civilian casualties. An average airstrike has countless hours of analyzed intelligence behind it and a lawyer’s involvement. Mistakes still happen, such as the horrific Feb. 28 strike on an elementary school in Minab, which killed at least 175 people. The incident remains under investigation, and American military targeters may have believed the school was part of an adjacent naval base in southern Iran.
Mr. Trump’s threats to indiscriminately launch airstrikes on Iran’s infrastructure amount to holding a civilian population hostage as a means of coercing the government in Tehran.
Praising gratuitous death and destruction has been a running theme in Mr. Trump’s second term. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has publicly dismissed the “stupid rules of engagement,” which are drawn up by senior officers and U.S. military lawyers to protect both troops and civilians, and instead has called for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
This glorification of carnage has been echoed in the White House’s social media channels, which in recent weeks have published a series of stomach-churning propaganda clips that feature real footage of airstrikes in Iran cut with cartoons and scenes from video games and movies — all edited to guitar lick-laden soundtracks. War may appear super cool to Trump administration staffers who watch it from 6,000 miles away through a pop-culture viewfinder, but the rest of us should examine the human reality — and cost — of combat.
In Iran, no less than 1,443 civilians, at least 217 of them children, have been killed since Mr. Trump launched the war alongside Israel on Feb. 28, a consortium of human rights groups estimated in a recent report. The United Nations reports up to 3.2 million Iranians have been displaced from their homes. Across the region, 13 American military service members have been killed and more than 300 U.S. troops have been injured. More than 1,110 people have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon, more than 50 people have been killed in Persian Gulf countries and at least 16 people have died in Iran’s attacks on Israel.
If the U.S. military follows through with the president’s proposed attacks, it will surely open an even bloodier new chapter as the war continues in its fifth week. It would be a major escalation that risks even greater Iranian retaliation against allies’ energy sites across the Gulf, causing a domino effect of suffering for civilians across the Middle East.
It would also be self-defeating. Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel have repeatedly called upon average Iranians to revolt and overthrow the regime. A bombing campaign against the critical utilities these very people depend on to live their lives is hardly an inspiring call to action. More likely, it would propagate a new generation of enemies for Americans to fight.
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