U.S. President Donald Trump‘s announcement late Tuesday of a two-week ceasefire with Iran appears to have narrowly prevented threats that international law experts say could have amounted to war crimes if carried out.
The ceasefire got here lower than two hours before a Tuesday evening deadline set by Trump, who had warned earlier within the day that “an entire civilization will die tonight” if Iran did not strike a deal that included reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
That message got here after he threatened to explode every bridge and power plant in Iran and vowed to bomb the country “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”
Despite walking back the threat — no less than for now — international law and even Pentagon policy suggest Trump’s increasingly hostile threats by themselves potentially violate the laws of war.
If widespread attacks against Iran’s “civilization” and civilian infrastructure are ever carried out, experts and ex-military members add, it could be a “clear” war crime — a priority Trump dismissed in a press conference Monday.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday made clear the military was able to follow through on Trump’s threat if a deal hadn’t been reached, and had a listing of targets that included power plants, bridges and energy infrastructure that Iran “couldn’t defend.”
“We were locked and loaded,” he told reporters. “President Trump had the ability to cripple Iran’s entire economy in minutes, but he selected mercy.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Trump’s comments Wednesday while celebrating the ceasefire as a “victory” for the U.S.
“I understand the questions on the president’s rhetoric, but what the president cares probably the most about is results, and in truth, his very tough rhetoric and his tough negotiating style is what has led to the result that you just are all witnessing today,” she told reporters.
Jason Dempsey, a U.S. army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and later as special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under former U.S. president Barack Obama, called Trump’s dismissal and rhetoric “flat-out horrifying.”
“There may be nothing positive in any respect to say about this, and it’s a willful ceding of even a pretense of attempting to hold on to the moral high ground,” he said.
What does international law say?
Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told reporters Monday that attacking civilian infrastructure is banned under international law.
“Even when specific civilian infrastructure were to qualify as a military objective,” he said, “international humanitarian law would still prohibit attacks against them if they could be expected to cause excessive incidental civilian harm.”
That principle is specified by the 1949 Geneva Conventions that established international humanitarian law. Every country, including america, is a signatory to those treaties.
Nevertheless, the U.S. has not adopted the 1977 additional protocol to the conventions, which specifically prohibits attacks or destruction of anything considered “indispensable to the survival of the civilian population,” including agriculture, drinking water, infrastructure and other essentials.
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The extra protocol also outlaws threats of widespread violence that may spread terror inside a civilian population.
Nevertheless, the U.S. Defense Department’s manual for the laws of war does explicitly forbid such threats.
“Measures of intimidation or terrorism against the civilian population are prohibited, including acts or threats of violence, the first purpose of which is to spread terror among the many civilian population,” the manual, which was last updated in 2023, says.
Iranians each inside the country and abroad in countries like Canada reacted with fear to Trump’s rhetoric.
The Pentagon manual also acknowledges the U.S. military is usually urged to respect international treaty rules that even they or an enemy combatant should not party to, “since the treaty represents ‘modern international public opinion’ as to how military operations ought to be conducted.”
Robert Goldman, a professor of international law and human rights at American University, said it’s “very difficult at this stage to disentangle negotiation from threat,” noting past presidents have used a “carrot and stick” approach in diplomacy.
“You might have to take the source into consideration,” he added. “This man (Trump) isn’t a standard president. This man isn’t a diplomat, to place it mildly.”
If Trump ever carried out his attacks on civilian infrastructure in the way in which he was threatening this week, Goldman said, “I might haven’t any problem in reaching a conclusion that we’re coping with wanton destruction and we’ll be war crimes.”
“The approach appears to be one which is motivated by spite, by revenge,” he added. “That’s destruction for destruction’s sake: ‘You won’t do what I let you know to do, I’ll obliterate your capability to operate as a state.’ That isn’t allowed.”
Has the Iran war seen war crimes?
War crimes are generally defined as “serious” violations of international law, including the Geneva Conventions, in keeping with bodies corresponding to the United Nations, the International Criminal Court and the International Red Cross.
The Pentagon’s law of war manual notes that “longstanding U.S. military doctrine” is to define war crimes as “any violation of the law of war.”
In an open letter earlier this month, greater than 100 international law experts within the U.S. said there have been “serious concerns about violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including potential war crimes” by the Trump administration.
The launching of the war itself, they argued, violated the United Nations Charter because Iran didn’t pose an imminent threat — something Prime Minister Mark Carney has also suggested. The Trump administration has disputed this with conflicting justifications.
Multiple international law and UN experts have suggested the strike on an Iranian girl’s school on the primary day of the war, which killed no less than 175 civilians — most of them schoolchildren — could also be a violation of international law.
A preliminary U.S. military investigation into the strike on the varsity, which was near an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Naval Forces compound, found it likely occurred resulting from outdated intelligence and was not deliberate, The Associated Press has reported.
Nevertheless, there’s legal evaluation that means some “mistakes” in war can and ought to be prosecuted for failing to stop them.
Human Rights Watch, in calling for a war crimes investigation into the strike, also stressed the identical principle highlighted by the UN and other experts like Goldman: that the destruction of military targets should be weighed against “disproportionate” harm to civilians and their infrastructure.
Even “dual use” infrastructure utilized by each the military and civilians should be analyzed the identical way, experts say.
Each the international law experts of their letter and Human Rights Watch have warned that Hegseth has “deliberately and systematically weakened” protections meant to make sure the U.S. military complies with international law.
Those steps include removing or replacing senior military lawyers and judge advocates general who provide oversight of combat operations, they said.
Those self same experts have expressed concern over Hegseth’s rhetoric through the Iran war, corresponding to calling the principles of engagement “silly” in a March 2 press conference where he said such rules may constrain the flexibility to “fight to win.”
René Provost, a professor of international law at McGill University, said it was vital for america to hitch all countries in upholding those rules.
“These standards didn’t come about from do-gooders who thought that the world ought to be a pleasant place where bad things don’t occur,” he said. “Quite the opposite, the principles that now we have were built on the ruins of the Second World War and the acknowledgement that nobody comes out a winner when there are not any rules.
“This seems to have been lost to those that are making decisions in america.”
Who’s answerable for accountability?
Goldman explained that determining a war crime involves not only examining the outcomes of an attack, but additionally “the data that those that planned the attack knew at the moment” — in other words, whether or not they were aware beforehand that it could violate international law.
That will require investigations and ultimately prosecutions by either a state government or a world court.
The U.S. isn’t a celebration to the International Criminal Court, which might lead such an investigation. The Trump administration has sanctioned multiple ICC officials — including judges — for investigating each Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and the U.S. military’s conduct through the war in Afghanistan.
Many signatories to the ICC, including Canada, have recognized the concept of “universal jurisdiction,” which might allow states to prosecute crimes outside their borders.
Carney said Tuesday that each one parties within the Iran war must respect international law, including by “not targeting, definitely civilians, or civilian infrastructure,” but didn’t criticize Trump specifically.
Errol Mendes, a professor on the University of Ottawa who has served as a visiting lawyer to the ICC, said the road to accountability may take years and never occur until after Trump leaves office, but is one price pursuing. He cited the ICC’s prosecution of Serbian president Slobodan Milošević as a precedent.
“I’m not saying that (it is going to occur) today or tomorrow, even next 12 months or in the following five, 10 years,” he said. “But I feel for the great of humanity that it really is significant for leaders in our country and others to start out saying that it’s time. It’s time we set it out in black and white.”
The U.S. Congress could also investigate, and domestic military tribunals or the U.S. Justice Department could pursue a prosecution, though Goldman said those appear unlikely within the short term, given the present political climate within the U.S.
Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters Tuesday that the department has provided legal guidance to the administration throughout the war, but didn’t say whether Trump was following it.