In a statement issued on the anniversary of the adoption of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 concerning the laws of war, the Foreign Ministry said the treaties were adopted 77 years ago, on August 12, 1949.<\/p>\n
The ministry said the binding international instruments established a set of principles and rules governing armed conflicts, including the principles of \u201cdistinction\u201d between military and civilian targets, \u201cproportionality,\u201d \u201cmilitary necessity,\u201d and \u201crefraining from inflicting unnecessary pain and suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n
It noted that Article 1, common to all four conventions, obliges the contracting states not only to respect the provisions of the conventions \u201cin all circumstances,\u201d but also to ensure respect for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese rules are now binding on all countries as an integral part of international humanitarian law,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
Despite the clarity of these principles and rules, and the legal obligation of all states \u201cto respect and ensure respect for\u201d them, the world is witnessing unprecedented violations of international humanitarian law, the Foreign Ministry said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Zionist regime alone is the biggest violator of international humanitarian law and, over the past eight decades, has committed the most serious international crimes, particularly war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity in occupied Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and other parts of West Asia,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
The ministry added that the war crimes committed by Israel during its acts of aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Iranian calendar years 1404 and 1405, carried out with the complicity and participation of the United States, rank among the most serious violations of international humanitarian law since 1949.<\/p>\n
It said the war crimes committed by the \u201cterrorist US army and the genocidal Zionist regime\u201d during their military aggression against Iran over the past year and a half had \u201cpushed back the boundaries of savagery and brutality.\u201d<\/p>\n
The statement cited the killing of students and teachers in Minab with Tomahawk missiles and the attack on Lamerd Stadium with cluster missiles on March 9, 2026, as well as the attack on residential homes in Qeshm with one-ton bombs on July 30, 2026, as examples of the thousands of war crimes committed by the United States and Israel against the Iranian people.<\/p>\n
The Foreign Ministry said the \u201cblatant and systematic disregard\u201d of the US ruling establishment for fundamental rules of international humanitarian law, along with explicit statements by its senior officials, including the president, secretary of war and secretary of state, and the repeated pattern of attacks against civilians and civilian sites and infrastructure, demonstrated the US government\u2019s intention to commit grave, serious and systematic violations of the rules governing armed conflicts.<\/p>\n
\u201cUS and Zionist regime attacks on hospitals, universities, schools, residential areas, bridges, airports and firefighting centers, as well as the killing of civilians, women and children, including in Minab, Lamerd and Qeshm, fall under the acts stipulated in Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, including willful killing, causing serious suffering to persons, and extensive destruction of property and assets,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
It added that Article 147 classifies such acts as grave breaches, meaning that \u201cthe material and mental elements of these crimes are fully established.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ministry further said repeated acknowledgments by US officials that \u201cthere will be no quarter, no mercy\u201d as well as public threats to attack Iran\u2019s infrastructure, bridges and power plants and the use of expressions such as \u201creturning Iran to the Stone Age\u201d and \u201ccompletely destroying Iranian civilization,\u201d alongside repeated attacks on civilian targets, constitute \u201cincontrovertible positive evidence\u201d of prior intent regarding the nature and consequences of the acts committed and of a deliberate pattern in carrying out the grave breaches covered by Article 147.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccordingly, upon establishing attribution, causation and other legal elements in each case, the material and mental elements of the grave breaches under Article 147 can be established, and the criminal responsibility of the perpetrators and those who ordered them falls upon the responsible persons pursuant to Article 146 of the Fourth Geneva Convention,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
The ministry noted that Article 146 obliges the states parties to prosecute and punish perpetrators and those who ordered such grave breaches.<\/p>\n
The continuation of grave and serious violations of international humanitarian law by the United States and the Israeli regime, on the one hand, and the inaction of the United Nations, states parties to the four Geneva Conventions and Switzerland as the depositary state in fulfilling their obligations under the common Article 1 of the conventions, have led to the normalization of violations of international humanitarian law and the promotion of impunity for war crimes, the statement said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis process is not merely a threat against one nation; rather, it is a catastrophic setback for the entire legal system that humanity has built in its pursuit of civilization and the restraint of violence,\u201d it warned.<\/p>\n
The Foreign Ministry stressed that the international community, the states parties to the Geneva Conventions and Switzerland, as the depositary of the conventions, cannot remain indifferent to such unprecedented violations that constitute clear instances of war crimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first common article of the Geneva Conventions does not merely oblige states to respect these instruments; it requires them to \u2018ensure respect for the provisions of the conventions,\u2019\u201d the statement concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a statement issued on the anniversary of the adoption of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 concerning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-584208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584208","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=584208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}