Trump threatens war crimes in Iran: "An entire civilization will die tonight"

WashingtonDonald Trump's ultimatum to unleash "hell" on Iran has entered the final countdown. Although the United States has been bombing bridges and power plants for days, the president has redoubled his threats to commit war crimes with the massive attack on civilian targets. "An entire civilization will die tonight, beyond recovery. I don't want it to happen, but it probably will," he wrote this Tuesday in a message on Truth Social, in which he assured that "47 years of extortion, corruption, and death will finally end."

"Perhaps something revolutionary and wonderful will happen. We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world," he added. Tonight at 8 p.m. (Washington time, 2 a.m. in Catalonia) is the deadline that the American president has set for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. If it does not, he assures that he will attack all of the country's infrastructure. Before publishing this message, Iranian authorities have reported suffering simultaneous attacks on bridges, power plants, and train stations throughout Iran.

Although Trump will not be the first American president to commit war crimes, he is the first to have explicitly shown himself open to doing so. Yesterday, at the grandiloquent press conference to narrate the rescue of the American pilot, the president admitted that he is not "at all" concerned about committing war crimes if, after the deadline he has imposed, the ayatollah regime has not reached an agreement with the US and has reopened the Strait of Hormuz. Attacking civilian infrastructure is considered a war crime according to the Geneva Convention. Internally, legal experts at the Pentagon are already looking for new targets that can justify that they also have a military use in an attempt to cover their backs, according to "Politico". But the generals' concern does not seem to be the same as Trump's.

The Republican's repeated threats in recent days, with a clear will and awareness of inflicting harm on the civilian population, are difficult to evade. Yesterday, Trump also affirmed that the Iranians would be "willing to suffer" the hell he has threatened them with if this ultimately secures their freedom. Previously, via Truth Social, the Republican had also insisted that the U.S. would strike "every single one of the country's power plants" and would also "blow up" desalination plants. These infrastructures are vital to guarantee water for the more than 90,000 people living in the country, and their destruction would entail enormous collective punishment.

"These rhetorical statements —if carried out— would amount to the most serious war crimes, and therefore the president's statements place government members in a profoundly difficult situation," wrote two former officers of the Army's Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG), Margaret Donovan and Rachel Van Landingham, yesterday on the Just Security website. War crimes would not only fall on the commander-in-chief, meaning Trump, but also on all members of the chain of command who contribute to their execution. Since the Nuremberg trials, obeying orders is no longer an excuse to escape responsibility.