Suppose Iran dispatched operatives to Mexico, where, from the Texas border, they fired a missile at an American base and, unintentionally but carelessly, demolished a nearby American school, killing 175 people.
What if they then blew up fuel depots, showering a chemical rain on residents? Then struck homes, schools and clinics, as Iran’s leader warned that “death, fire and fury” would so pulverize America that it could never be rebuilt?
In that case, President Trump — and all of us — would howl at outrageous attacks on innocent civilians. And we’d be right.
War achieved an industrial savagery in World War II: After the firebombing of Tokyo, the United States boasted that it might have killed more people (perhaps 100,000) in six hours than ever before in history. After the war, in sober reflection, the United States helped lead a global effort to try to tame the savagery of conflict and, in particular, to shield civilians. The additional protocols to the Geneva Conventions, for example, stipulate that it is impermissible to destroy infrastructure that civilians depend on — such as “drinking water installations.”
In recent years, that veneer of civilization has seemed to slip away. After invading Ukraine, Russia bombed civilians and cut off their heat and electricity. In Gaza, Israel starved Palestinians, targeted children and destroyed health care and education systems, according to a U.N. commission. In Sudan, the United Arab Emirates has backed a militia that has starved civilians and engaged in mass murder and mass rape.
The United States supplied weaponry used in Gaza and has failed to call out the Emirates, but it still — inconsistently, halfheartedly — professed to uphold the laws of war. Now in Iran, I fear we may be retreating even further from the principles we once proclaimed, loosening the shackles that civilized nations place on themselves to protect our shared humanity.
The attack on Iran appeared to violate international law, said Oona Hathaway, a Yale legal scholar and the president-elect of the American Society of International Law, because it neither had United Nations approval nor was necessary for immediate self-defense. Beyond that, while it is too early to be definitive, some of the American and Israeli strikes raise troubling questions about possible war crimes.
The apparent U.S. bombing of a girls’ school, reportedly killing about 175 people, is not necessarily a war crime if it was an honest mistake, Hathaway said. But The Times reported that the targeting employed old data. If that reflected a reckless lack of care, it might rise to a war crime, she said.
Iran reported that the United States had struck a desalination plant providing water to 30 villages, although the United States and Israel denied responsibility. The Iranian Red Crescent Society also said that attacks had hit more than 17,000 homes, 65 schools and 14 medical centers. UNICEF reports that more than 1,100 children have been killed or injured in the war so far, in multiple countries.
David Crane, an American legal scholar and former prosecutor for war crimes, said that if a site like a desalination plant was used primarily for civilian purposes, striking it would be a war crime. He lamented that we are now in an age of “lawless conflict” propelled in part by the United States.
I worry that if Trump grows increasingly frustrated and exhausts the target lists, he may be tempted to strike dual-use civilian infrastructure, such as the electrical grid or highways and bridges, so as to punish Iran and inflict broader misery that might provoke unrest.
Indeed, the president and those close to him seem to be telegraphing such an approach.
“We will hit them so hard that it will not be possible for them or anybody else helping them to ever recover that section of the world, if they do anything,” Trump told reporters. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denounced “stupid rules of engagement” and dismantled the Pentagon office that sought to reduce civilian casualties in war. Senator Lindsey Graham boasted that “we’re going to blow the hell out of these people.”
On social media, Trump warned that if Iran obstructs the Strait of Hormuz, the United States “will make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a Nation, again — Death, Fire, and Fury will reign upon them” (his spelling and capitalization).
As Phillips O’Brien, an American scholar of military strategy, put it, “One might say he was threatening to commit one of the greatest war crimes in history.”
Other countries have noticed. While some leaders have applauded the attack on Iran, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain described the American and Israeli war on Iran as reckless and illegal. The Swiss defense minister said that the American attack violated international law. Dominique de Villepin, a former French prime minister, called the American war “illegal, illegitimate, ineffective and dangerous” — and urged sanctions. In some eyes, Trump is taking us a step toward becoming a rogue state.
There are more practical reasons to oppose Trump’s war: Overall, it has not toppled Iran’s dictatorship and might have strengthened it. We helped install a younger supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who may be even harder line than his father. Blockage of the Strait of Hormuz raises gas prices and threatens supplies of fertilizer. Despite immense cost in lives and treasure, both the American and Iranian people seem, for now, to be in a worse place than before Trump started the war.
Wesley Clark, a retired four-star Army general, pointed to the practical challenges and lack of strategy and told me the war “is going off the rails.”
Step back, though, and the legacy may be even more chilling.
“The rules-based scaffolding meant to restrain the worst excesses of war is cracking,” warned Tom Fletcher, the United Nations humanitarian chief. I fear that he’s right and that “we are sliding ever deeper into a world where there are no longer any rules,” as Germany’s vice chancellor, Lars Klingbeil, put it — and it is the United States that is helping to lead the way.
In short, long after this war is behind us, we may remember it as part of a repudiation of the noble historical effort that we once led to limit the horrors of war. If so, all humanity is the loser.
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