Power plants, desalination stations, oil wells, roads, bridges and other infrastructure.<\/p>\n
They are the foundations of civilian life in Iran, and their destruction by American and Israeli forces would cause widespread suffering among the country\u2019s 93 million people \u2014 and in most cases would be considered a war crime under international law.<\/p>\n
Yet President Trump has repeatedly threatened to do exactly that, with the aim of sending Iran \u201cback to the Stone Ages, where they belong,\u201d as he put it in a speech on Wednesday<\/a>.<\/p>\n On Easter weekend, he wrote online<\/a> that \u201call Hell will reign down\u201d on the Iranians unless they met a deadline of Monday to make concessions or open up the Strait of Hormuz to ship traffic, adding, \u201cGlory be to GOD!\u201d<\/p>\n The president was emphatic<\/a> about the targets in a follow-up post: \u201cTuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin\u2019 Strait, you crazy bastards, or you\u2019ll be living in Hell \u2014 JUST WATCH. Praise be to Allah.\u201d<\/p>\n He is talking not just about civilian sites with military uses, which can be considered legitimate targets. In his speech on Wednesday, he said he would \u201chit each and every one\u201d of the country\u2019s power plants, \u201cprobably simultaneously.\u201d The next day, after the American military destroyed a large bridge<\/a> near Tehran, Iran\u2019s capital, he exulted on social media: \u201cMuch more to follow!\u201d At least 13 civilians were killed and 95 injured, an Iranian official said.<\/p>\n No other recent American president has talked so openly about committing potential war crimes, legal experts, historians and former U.S. officials say. Wartime American presidents and their aides have usually insisted they were trying to follow international and U.S. military law, even if they violated it in some cases.<\/p>\n International laws aimed at preventing the horrors of total war<\/a> are codified in a series of agreements, including the Geneva Conventions<\/a>, the Hague Conventions<\/a>, the Nuremberg Principles<\/a> and the United Nations Charter<\/a>. Deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure violate those. So does pillaging a country<\/a>, which Mr. Trump has suggested he might do by taking Iran\u2019s oil<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s language and actions could have far-reaching consequences. Within Iran, it is likely to galvanize opposition to the United States, including among some ordinary Iranians who have protested their own government.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t believe that Iranians have rallied around a deeply unpopular regime, but the destruction of infrastructure and rising civilian casualties strengthen the regime\u2019s narrative that this is a war on the nation, not just its rulers,\u201d said Karim Sadjadpour, a scholar of Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace<\/a>.<\/p>\n On the global stage, it could further diminish America\u2019s standing and weaken norms of state conduct in wartime that are intended to protect civilians. Legal experts say those norms have eroded in recent years because of Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine<\/a>, the Sudanese civil war<\/a> and the war against Hamas in Gaza<\/a> by Israel, which is now invading Lebanon<\/a> and attacking Iran<\/a> with the United States.<\/p>\n The American president has been unambiguous in his disdain for international law. In a two-hour Oval Office interview<\/a> in January with The New York Times, Mr. Trump declared<\/a>, \u201cI don\u2019t need international law.\u201d When asked whether there was any limit on his global powers, he said, \u201cYeah, there is one thing. My own morality.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. military decimated a large bridge near Tehran on Thursday, after which Mr. Trump posted that the United States \u201chasn\u2019t even started destroying what\u2019s left in Iran.Credit…Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times<\/p>\n The world is seeing that thinking play out in real time. On Thursday night, after a day of public criticism by legal experts over the bridge strike, Mr. Trump doubled down, writing online that the U.S. military \u201chasn\u2019t even started destroying what\u2019s left in Iran. Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants!\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Trump\u2019s aides are onboard. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last month that \u201cwe will keep pushing, keep advancing, no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.\u201d A \u201cno quarter\u201d order \u2014 to kill all enemy soldiers<\/a>, even those who are badly injured or who surrender \u2014 is a war crime under international law and in the U.S. military code.<\/p>\n When pressed on Monday about a new threat by Mr. Trump to expand targets to civilian sites, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that the president prefers diplomacy, but that Iranian leaders are \u201clunatics.\u201d \u201cThey are insane,\u201d he said in an interview with ABC News<\/a>. \u201cThey are religious zealots.\u201d<\/p>\n The Pentagon referred questions to U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East. The command did not reply to emails asking whether it had deliberately targeted civilian sites or would do so.<\/p>\n \u2018Clearly Unlawful and Deeply Misguided\u2019<\/p>\n The administration\u2019s language has alarmed many legal experts, who say the signal being sent to U.S. service members \u2014 and to foreign nations, including adversaries \u2014 shapes behavior on the battlefield.<\/p>\n One hundred legal experts and lawyers voiced their concerns in an open letter<\/a> published by Just Security last week. They said that the conduct of the war and rhetoric of U.S. officials \u201craise serious concerns about violations of international humanitarian law, including potential war crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n They pointed out that the very act of the United States\u2019 attacking Iran is a violation of the U.N. Charter, since there is no evidence Mr. Trump was acting to defend his country against an imminent threat. And the president did not get congressional authorization for the war, in violation of the Constitution.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s something so clearly unlawful and deeply misguided,\u201d Oona A. Hathaway, a Yale law professor who co-wrote the letter and has worked as a special counsel at the Pentagon. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to fathom how much the rules have been completely thrown out.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Trump began threatening to attack Iran\u2019s civilian infrastructure on March 13, when he wrote online that he could decide to \u201cwipe out<\/a>\u201d oil facilities on Kharg Island<\/a>, Iran\u2019s main oil export hub. On Monday, he expanded the threat<\/a> to include all electricity plants, oil wells and desalination plants in the country.<\/p>\n When asked whether the United States could commit potential war crimes, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said at a news conference that \u201cthis administration and the United States armed forces will always act within the confines of the law.\u201d But to achieve his goals, she added, the president \u201cis going to move forward unabated, and he expects the Iranian regime to make a deal with the administration.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. military has already killed hundreds of civilians in the war, including nearly 200 schoolchildren in one strike.Credit…Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times<\/p>\n U.S. Central Command said Wednesday that American forces had hit more than 12,300 sites in Iran since Mr. Trump and Israel started the war on Feb. 28. Some of the attacks, aimed at military sites near civilian areas, have resulted in the killings<\/a> of hundreds of civilians, including nearly 200 schoolchildren<\/a> in one missile strike.<\/p>\n \u201cI really don\u2019t feel well; the attacks have now reached civilian structures,\u201d Amir Sarkandi, a tech entrepreneur in Tehran, said in an online forum after the bridge attack on Thursday. \u201cOur national investments and treasures are being destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n Israel has also struck civilian sites<\/a>. Their officials insist they are destroying dual-use infrastructure. In retaliation, Iran has hit civilian sites<\/a> in Israel and Gulf Arab nations.<\/p>\n A Pentagon Pushing \u2018Lethality\u2019<\/p>\n Civilian sites can be considered legal targets if they are used by a military, said Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer specializing in the law of armed conflict who is a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group<\/a>. That determination is usually made on a case-by-case basis.<\/p>\n Mr. Hegseth, however, has fired<\/a> and reassigned<\/a> uniformed lawyers and dismantled<\/a> many of the offices set up to prevent the targeting of civilians and related sites.<\/p>\n Instead, he has talked endlessly about increasing \u201clethality<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis secretary of defense has a track record of denigrating the law of war, denigrating military lawyers,\u201d Mr. Finucane said. \u201cIt is very disturbing because we don\u2019t know to what degree this rhetoric will translate to illegality.\u201d<\/p>\n If American service members carry out orders that they believe are war crimes, that could traumatize them, veterans say. Some active-duty Marines are already calling Mr. Hegseth\u2019s agency the \u201cDepartment of War Crimes\u201d rather than the \u201cDepartment of War,\u201d the president\u2019s name for the Defense Department, said Representative Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts, who served in Iraq as a Marine.<\/p>\n During a standoff with Iran in his first administration, Mr. Trump threatened to destroy 52 cultural sites<\/a> in the country. Mark T. Esper, then the defense secretary, acknowledged that hitting such sites<\/a> would be a war crime<\/a> and said the Pentagon would not do it.<\/p>\n The second Trump administration has taken a different approach.<\/p>\n For one thing, it has unleashed military violence<\/a> in more brazen ways in a short period, carrying out airstrikes<\/a> in eight countries in just one year.<\/p>\n And the administration has drawn condemnation<\/a> for nearly 50 strikes on civilian boats<\/a> in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that have resulted in at least 163 deaths.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump has asserted, without presenting evidence, that the boats were carrying drugs to the United States, and that America is in an \u201carmed conflict<\/a>\u201d with drug cartels. But legal experts say<\/a> the strikes are outright murder.<\/p>\n On March 4, a U.S. submarine torpedoed an Iranian frigate<\/a> near Sri Lanka with about 180 people onboard. The destroyer had been returning home from military exercises in India, in which the United States had also participated.<\/p>\n