AN ULTIMATUM TO IRAN
Trump’s ultimatum, conveyed while he spent the weekend in Florida, carries a threat of remarkable aggression. His previous messaging mostly focused on US success in hitting Iran’s air force, navy and missile production. This time, the threatened target is the energy infrastructure that powers hospitals, homes and more.
His social media post – 51 words, much of it in capital letters – did not have the appearance of a message that underwent the careful legal scrutiny needed to justify an attack on civilian infrastructure, said Geoffrey Corn, a law professor at Texas Tech University and a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army who served as a military lawyer.
“It certainly has a feeling of ready, fire, aim,” Corn said of Trump’s moving strategy.
“He overestimated his ability to control the events once he unleashed this torrent of violence.”
That type of widespread attack would probably be a war crime, Corn said. For military leaders, it could force a choice between obeying an order to carry out a war crime or refusing and facing criminal sanction for willful disobedience, he said.
Laws governing warfare do not explicitly forbid attacks on power plants, but the tactic is allowed only if an analysis finds that the military advantages outweigh the civilian harm, legal scholars say. It is seen as a high bar to clear because the rules of war are, at their core, designed to separate civilian and military targets.
Iran’s UN ambassador, in a letter to the Security Council, warned that the deliberate targeting of power plants would be inherently indiscriminate and a war crime, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
The White House has already faced intense backlash after the US was blamed for a missile strike on an Iranian elementary school that killed more than 165 people.