GoKawiil“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” posted President Donald Trump on Easter Sunday. In case one thought that was an impulsive utterance, it’s notable that the president in apparently prepared remarks a few days earlier said, “If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously.”
Such rhetorical statements – if followed through – would amount to the most serious war crimes – and thus the president’s statements place servicemembers in a profoundly challenging situation. As former uniformed military lawyers who advised targeting operations, we know the presidents’ words run counter to decades of legal training of military personnel and risk placing our warfighters on a path of no return.
Iranian power plants and other critical civilian infrastructure are protected from attacks by the law of war the United States helped craft after World War II. Such an object can lose its protection only if it is used for military purposes by the enemy and its destruction “offers a definite military advantage.” Even then, such an object can be attacked only if, after a case-by-case rigorous analysis, the “concrete and direct military advantage anticipated” outweighs the civilian suffering that is expected to result. (Geneva Convention Additional Protocol I art. 52, art. 57; DOD Law of War Manual, § 5.6, § 5.12).
Despite those well-settled legal parameters, President Trump has repeatedly threatened to obliterate such infrastructure without regard to the law’s high demands. His comments are blatant expressions that he is willing to turn the United States into a rogue State like Iran and Russia, one that rejects the fundamental legal restraints that protect innocent non-combatants like children, and the Iranian civilian population itself.
Effects on Servicemembers
While our Commander-in-Chief threatens to “obliterate” “each and every one of their electric generating plants,” U.S. military commanders have been approving strike packages, wrestling with how to transform Trump’s dangerous bombast into lawful targets.
Asking our military professionals—lawyers and commanders alike—to grapple with the president’s erratic behavior is enormously consequential. U.S. military commanders have sworn to obey the Constitution and only those orders from their superiors that are lawful. Threats to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” and to show “no quarter, no mercy” are plainly illegal. Trump’s outrageous statements gravely threaten our military professionals’ bedrock moral and legal principles, ones enshrined in the law of war that they’ve been trained to follow their entire careers.
We write to highlight that the Commander-in-Chief’s dangerous rhetoric places our service members in an intolerable position in several respects.
First, such threats undermine U.S. legitimacy and global standing, as they demonstrate a rejection of binding international agreements and core commitments to the laws of war. Indeed, the U.S. military doubled down on its commitment to the law of war following Vietnam War-era atrocities, requiring our Armed Forces to follow the law regardless how any conflict is characterized. An operation that followed through on Trump’s rhetoric would be one of infamy in the history of modern warfare.
Second, they pose a significant risk of moral and psychic injury for servicemembers. National soul-searching regarding how Americans fight followed the long U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in which both civilian casualties and detainee abuse undermined strategic objectives and weighed heavily on soldiers’ consciences long after the fighting stopped. This reflection led to initiatives such as the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation program and new laws regarding detention and interrogation practices, strengthening U.S. commitment to fighting honorably and effectively through adherence to the law.
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