{"id":164350,"date":"2025-12-02T15:56:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T15:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/164350\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T15:56:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T15:56:09","slug":"bbc-verify-live-satellite-images-show-reservoir-levels-dropping-as-tehran-faces-water-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/164350\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC Verify Live: Satellite images show reservoir levels dropping as Tehran faces water crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Legal experts weigh in on second US strike on alleged drug boatpublished at 15:20 GMT<\/p>\n

15:20 GMT<\/p>\n

\"\"Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist<\/p>\n

A second strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat was ordered by US Navy Admiral Frank Bradley, the White House has confirmed.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post recently reported that two people survived the first blast and were clinging to the burning vessel when they were killed by the second strike.<\/p>\n

Legal experts have told BBC Verify that this second strike was probably illegal under international and US law. <\/p>\n

The White House also confirmed that Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth had authorised the operation to target the boat, but denied Washington Post reports he had given an order to “kill everybody” on board. <\/p>\n

The White House said Admiral Bradley \u201cworked well within his authority and the law”.<\/p>\n

Media caption, <\/p>\n

White House defends Venezuela boat strikes, says Admiral Bradley acted legally<\/p>\n

If Hegseth did issue an order to “kill everybody”, then this would amount to declaring \u201cno quarter\u201d – meaning to leave no survivors – which Prof Luke Moffett says is itself illegal.<\/p>\n

Following orders is no defence to criminal acts, he says. The Queen\u2019s University Belfast expert adds there is a \u201clong history\u201d of war crimes convictions for soldiers over following illegal orders, including German soldiers at the Nuremberg trials after WW2.<\/p>\n

Prof Michael Becker of Trinity College Dublin also says that regardless of how Hegseth worded his order, there is a \u201cpresumption that orders are meant be interpreted in accordance with the law\u201d.<\/p>\n

He says that \u201cstrictly speaking, this may put the burden\u201d of responsibility on Admiral Bradley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Legal experts weigh in on second US strike on alleged drug boatpublished at 15:20 GMT 15:20 GMT Thomas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-164350","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}