WASHINGTON — President Trump said Monday afternoon that he’s unconcerned about critics claiming that airstrikes on critical infrastructure would amount to a war crime — insisting that Iranian civilians “want us to keep bombing.”
Trump was asked by a New York Times reporter if he’s worried about claims that targeting bridges and power plants would violate the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
“No, not at all — no, no I’m not. I hope I don’t have to do it,” Trump said in the White House briefing room, as he uses the threat in an effort to force a deal with Tehran ending the 38-day conflict.
Trump said at the briefing that if Iran doesn’t make a deal by a deadline of 8 p.m. Tuesday, its critical infrastructure will be obliterated.
“This is a critical period. They have a period of, well, ’til tomorrow, at eight o’clock,” he said.
“After that, they’re gonna have no bridges, they’re gonna have no power plants — Stone Ages, yeah.”
Trump said “we have a plan because of the power of our military where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again.”
He said “it will happen over a period of four hours.”
Trump claimed he had popular support within Iran for such devastating actions, saying, “I can only say this: They want us to keep bombing … because their life is in much greater danger. They want freedom for Iran, but it’s very hard for them to protest.”
Hours earlier, Trump told reporters on the White House lawn that Iran developing a nuclear weapon would be the real war crime.
“Allowing a sick country with demented leadership have a nuclear weapon, that’s a war crime,” he said.
Trump told reporters during the annual Easter Egg Roll that “they just don’t want to say, ‘Uncle.’ They don’t want to cry, as the expression goes, ‘Uncle!’ But they will, and if they don’t, then they will have no bridges, no power plants, they’ll have no anything.”
Legal experts recognize that the US military has targeted civilian infrastructure in prior conflicts, including bombing Serbia’s electricity grid during the American intervention on behalf of separatists in Kosovo in the late 1990s.
“People who think all power plants and bridges in Iran are off limits from military attack are just defending Iran regardless of what the laws of war actually provide,” said University of California at Berkeley law professor John Yoo, a well-known advocate for a broad understanding of executive power in wartime.
“The United States has struck bridges and power plants before during wartime,” said Yoo, a former Bush administration official.
“The question is whether the bridges are being used by the Iranians to conduct military operations, such as transporting not just military units, but also munitions, etc. used by the military. Same with power plants — if they are supplying electricity to the Iranian military or its command and control, they are legitimate targets. We struck the Serbian power grid during the Kosovo war.”
The most relevant portion of the Geneva Conventions shielding civilian infrastructure is the Additional Protocol I of 1977, which was rejected by the Reagan administration and not ratified.
The “key operative provision would radically change humanitarian law in favor of terrorists and other irregulars at the expense of civilians,” Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger wrote in a March 1986 memo.
Still, Trump has invited substantial pushback from the legal community — including 100 US-based experts, including law professors from Yale, Stanford, Harvard and other prestigious schools who signed an April 2 letter arguing “the attacks threatened by Trump, if implemented, could entail war crimes.”
“[A]ny strike must respect the principles of proportionality and precautions in attack,” the professors wrote.
“The proportionality principle prohibits attacks expected to cause incidental civilian harm that would be excessive in relation to the military advantage. The civilian harm to be considered includes foreseeable reverberating or indirect harm. In any attack, ‘all feasible precautions’ must be taken to avoid civilian harm.”
