Trump’s many threats of possible war crimes reach a crescendo in Iran

Just five months after President Donald Trump and his allies appeared indignant over a video in which six congressional Democrats warned service members not to obey illegal orders, Trump is showing exactly what they were talking about.

He’s set an 8 p.m. ET Tuesday deadline for Iran to agree to a deal and re-open the Strait of Hormuz. Otherwise, Trump has repeatedly said, he will strike Iranian infrastructure sites including power plants, bridges, oil wells and possibly others like water desalination plants in ways that could well amount to war crimes.

It remains to be seen whether he follows through if there is no deal. He has repeatedly delayed his deadline, which was initially set for two weeks ago, despite little evidence of serious negotiations.

When asked Monday about possibly committing war crimes, Trump said he wasn’t worried about it.

“You know the war crime?” he told reporters at the White House. “The war crime is allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

After more than a decade floating actions that might constitute war crimes — and arguably already breaking international law in recent months — the president is threatening to make good on such threats in the biggest theater imaginable.

Civilian infrastructure can be considered a valid target if it has a dual use for Iran’s military. But Trump has threatened to not just blow up some of Iran’s power plants; he’s threatened to blow up all of them.

A week ago, Trump’s threat on social media was “blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!) …” (He had previously floated blowing up oil infrastructure on Kharg.)

On Wednesday, the president doubled down in a primetime address, saying that “we are going to hit each and every one of their electric-generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously.”

And on Sunday, in a particularly frenzied post, he warned the deadline was fast approaching.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” he wrote on Truth Social. “There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria noted that attacks on basic energy infrastructure appear to be transparently against international law.

“That has traditionally been considered a war crime,” Zakaria said Sunday, “and it certainly on plain reading is a violation of the Geneva Convention.”

Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the United Nations secretary general, responded to Trump’s threats last week by saying: “If there’s an attack on clearly civilian infrastructure, that is not allowed under international humanitarian law.”

When asked the same day whether the administration was threatening war crimes, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded obliquely.

“Of course this administration and the United States armed forces will always act within the confines of the law,” she said.

When congressional Democrats released their video in November, it was cast as unthinkable that Trump would ever issue such an illegal order. The Justice Department even tried (unsuccessfully) to indict the lawmakers.

But Trump has repeatedly floated — and in some cases, the administration has done — things that at the very least flout international law.

In late 2015 during his first campaign, Trump advocated killing the families of terrorists, which many quickly noted would violate international law.

By early 2016, he advocated torture and pledged to “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” When it was noted that those orders appeared illegal, he assured troops would carry them out regardless (before backing off).

In 2020, he threatened to target Iranian cultural sites, which would have violated international law and likely have been a war crime. Then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper quickly acknowledged as much and pledged not to do it, with Trump backtracking again.

In a lower-profile incident in 2022, Trump floated — possibly in a joking manner — disguising US planes with Chinese flags and using them to “bomb the shit out of Russia” in order to set off a war between those two countries. This would pretty clearly have violated the Geneva Conventions.

By last summer, the administration arguably tipped over into actually committing likely war crimes. This was when it conducted the second, so-called double-tap strike on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean after the first strike left survivors.

Even some Republican politicians expressed concern about that second strike. (And the initial strikes on such suspected drug boats, it bears mentioning, have been legally dubious.)

The New York Times later reported that the aircraft used in the strikes was painted to look like a civilian plane and hid its weaponry. That, similar to Trump’s idea to disguise a plane with another country’s flag, could amount to a war crime known as “perfidy.” The administration said the plane was reviewed for compliance and said the strike was “fully consistent with the law of armed conflict.”

Early last month, a US submarine sank an Iranian warship even though it wasn’t engaged in combat and was in international waters near Sri Lanka. Some experts argued that strike, without a declared war and the lack of a US effort to rescue survivors, could be legally problematic.

And by mid-March, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a briefing said the US military would provide “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.” Even merely threatening, “No quarter” — which means declining to show mercy to a surrendering foe — appears to be illegal under international law.

The progression of all of these events follows a familiar pattern for Trump. He floats something seemingly unthinkable until, over time, it becomes less unthinkable.

But nobody should lose sight of what’s happening here: An American president is threatening things that appear to be war crimes, and he’s done so even after people noted it could be illegal.

Following through could mean not only a remarkable escalation in the Iran war, but perhaps a long-lasting change in views of US morality on the world stage.

It would also mark a real shift in strategy, given Trump has spoken about the possibility of spurring Iran’s citizens to overthrow their government. Attacking Iran’s infrastructure in ways that hurt civilians for years to come could turn Iran’s population more against the United States.

(Trump claimed Monday without providing evidence that Iran’s citizens actually want such bombings because it could result in freedom.)

His repeated delays of the deadline seem to project some uneasiness with following through. But his administration has already conducted strikes in the Western Hemisphere that could be war crimes. And even if he declines to follow through in Iran, he still appears to have threatened war crimes as a bargaining chip.

And it’s not clear that he still has people around him (like Esper) who would dissuade him from taking those sorts of actions.

Either way, what’s pretty evident is that those six Democrats may have had a point.