The New York Times reports:

President Trump’s threat on Tuesday to wipe out Iran’s entire civilization escalated days of bellicose rhetoric in which he has made what appear to be self-incriminating statements about an intent to commit war crimes if the Iranian government does not submit to his demands.

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, adding: “We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”

For days, Mr. Trump had vowed to order the U.S. military to systematically destroy every bridge and power plant in Iran if its government did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz to oil tankers. The laws of war forbid the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure as a means of coercing a government.

While it can sometimes be lawful to attack a specific civilian object if it offered a military advantage, an order to indiscriminately destroy all of a country’s bridges and power plants would be illegal and place military commanders in an untenable position, said Geoffrey S. Corn, who was the Army’s senior legal adviser on law-of-war issues and now teaches at Texas Tech Law School.

“I think this is the ultimate stress test not just for the JAG corps but even more so for the commanders with stars on their shoulders,” he said, referring to judge advocates general. “This is the moment where their oath necessitates them having the moral courage and the professional honor to say, ‘I’ve looked at this, I’ve done the analysis, I’m leaning forward in the foxhole, but this is not a lawful target.’”

In a statement, Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, did not directly respond to questions about whether Mr. Trump would be committing war crimes. She instead recited human rights abuses by the Iranian government and said “the Iranian people welcome the sound of bombs because it means their oppressors are losing.”

“The president will always stand with innocent civilians while annihilating the terrorists responsible for threatening our country and the entire world with a nuclear weapon,” she said. “Greater destruction can be avoided if the regime understands the seriousness of this moment and makes a deal with the United States.”

The United States has portrayed Russia’s targeting of civilian energy infrastructure in Ukraine as a war crime. In 2023, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. ordered the U.S. government to share evidence with the International Criminal Court that included intelligence about decisions by Russian officials to deliberately strike civilian infrastructure.

In January, Mr. Trump’s own ambassador to the United Nations condemned “Russia’s continuing and intensifying attacks on Ukraine’s energy facilities and other civil infrastructure.” [Continue reading…]