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U.S. President Donald Trump‘s announcement late Tuesday of a two-week ceasefire with Iran appears to have narrowly prevented threats that international law experts say could have amounted to war crimes if carried out.
The ceasefire came less than two hours before a Tuesday evening deadline set by Trump, who had warned earlier in the day that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran failed to strike a deal that included reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
That message came after he threatened to blow up every bridge and power plant in Iran and vowed to bomb the country “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”
Despite walking back the threat — at least for now — international law and even Pentagon policy suggest Trump’s increasingly hostile threats by themselves potentially violate the laws of war.
If widespread attacks against Iran’s “civilization” and civilian infrastructure are ever carried out, experts and ex-military members add, it would be a “clear” war crime — a concern Trump dismissed in a press conference Monday.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Trump’s comments Wednesday while celebrating the ceasefire as a “victory” for the U.S.
“I understand the questions about the president’s rhetoric, but what the president cares the most about is results, and in fact, his very tough rhetoric and his tough negotiating style is what has led to the result that you are all witnessing today,” she told reporters.
Jason Dempsey, a U.S. army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and later as special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under former U.S. president Barack Obama, called Trump’s dismissal and rhetoric “flat-out horrifying.”
“There is nothing positive at all to say about this, and it is a willful ceding of even a pretense of trying to hold on to the moral high ground,” he said.
What does international law say?
Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told reporters Monday that attacking civilian infrastructure is banned under international law.
“Even if specific civilian infrastructure were to qualify as a military objective,” he said, “international humanitarian law would still prohibit attacks against them if they may be expected to cause excessive incidental civilian harm.”
That principle is laid out in the 1949 Geneva Conventions that established international humanitarian law. Every country, including the United States, is a signatory to those treaties.
However, the U.S. has not adopted the 1977 additional protocol to the conventions, which specifically prohibits attacks or destruction of anything considered “indispensable to the survival of the civilian population,” including agriculture, drinking water, infrastructure and other essentials.
The additional protocol also outlaws threats of widespread violence that can spread terror within a civilian population.
Nevertheless, the U.S. Defense Department’s manual for the laws of war does explicitly forbid such threats.
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“Measures of intimidation or terrorism against the civilian population are prohibited, including acts or threats of violence, the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population,” the manual, which was last updated in 2023, says.
It also acknowledges the U.S. military is generally urged to respect international treaty rules that even they or an enemy combatant are not party to, “because the treaty represents ‘modern international public opinion’ as to how military operations should be conducted.”
Robert Goldman, a professor of international law and human rights at American University, said it’s “very difficult at this stage to disentangle negotiation from threat,” noting past presidents have used a “carrot and stick” approach in diplomacy.
“You have to take the source into consideration,” he added. “This man (Trump) is not a traditional president. This man is not a diplomat, to put it mildly.”
If Trump ever carried out his attacks on civilian infrastructure in the way he was threatening this week, Goldman said, “I would have no problem in reaching a conclusion that we’re dealing with wanton destruction and we’ll be looking at war crimes.”
“The approach appears to be one that is motivated by spite, by revenge,” he added. “That is destruction for destruction’s sake: ‘You won’t do what I tell you to do, I will obliterate your capacity to function as a state.’ That is not allowed.”.
Has the Iran war seen war crimes?
War crimes are generally defined as “serious” violations of international law, including the Geneva Conventions, according to bodies such as the United Nations, the International Criminal Court and the International Red Cross.
The Pentagon’s law of war manual notes that “longstanding U.S. military doctrine” is to define war crimes as “any violation of the law of war.”
In an open letter earlier this month, more than 100 international law experts in the U.S. said there were “serious concerns about violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including potential war crimes” by the Trump administration.
The launching of the war itself, they argued, violated the United Nations Charter because Iran did not pose an imminent threat — something Prime Minister Mark Carney has also suggested. The Trump administration has disputed this with conflicting justifications.
Multiple international law and UN experts have suggested the strike on an Iranian girl’s school on the first day of the war, which killed at least 175 civilians — most of them schoolchildren — may be a violation of international law.
A preliminary U.S. military investigation into the strike on the school, which was near an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Naval Forces compound, found it likely occurred due to outdated intelligence and was not deliberate, The Associated Press has reported.
However, there is legal analysis that suggests some “mistakes” in war can and should be prosecuted for failing to prevent them.
Human Rights Watch, in calling for a war crimes investigation into the strike, also stressed the same principle highlighted by the UN and other experts like Goldman: that the destruction of military targets must be weighed against “disproportionate” harm to civilians and their infrastructure.
Even “dual use” infrastructure used by both the military and civilians must be analyzed the same way, experts say.
Both the international law experts in their letter and Human Rights Watch have warned that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has “deliberately and systematically weakened” protections meant to ensure the U.S. military complies with international law.
Those steps include removing or replacing senior military lawyers and judge advocates general who provide oversight of combat operations, they said.
Those same experts have expressed concern over Hegseth’s rhetoric during the Iran war, such as calling the rules of engagement “stupid” in a March 2 press conference where he said such rules may constrain the ability to “fight to win.”
René Provost, a professor of international law at McGill University, said it was important for the United States to join all countries in upholding those rules.
“These standards didn’t come about from do-gooders who thought that the world should be a nice place where bad things don’t happen,” he said. “On the contrary, the rules that we have were built on the ruins of the Second World War and the acknowledgement that no one comes out a winner when there are no rules.
“This seems to have been lost to those who are making decisions in the United States.”
Who is responsible for accountability?
Goldman explained that determining a war crime involves not just examining the results of an attack, but also “the information that those who planned the attack knew at that time” — in other words, whether they were aware beforehand that it would violate international law.
That would require investigations and ultimately prosecutions by either a state government or an international court.
The U.S. is not a party to the International Criminal Court, which would lead such an investigation. The Trump administration has sanctioned multiple ICC officials — including judges — for investigating both Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and the U.S. military’s conduct during the war in Afghanistan.
Many signatories to the ICC, including Canada, have recognized the concept of “universal jurisdiction,” which would allow states to prosecute crimes outside their borders.
Carney said Tuesday that all parties in the Iran war need to respect international law, including by “not targeting, certainly civilians, or civilian infrastructure,” but did not criticize Trump specifically.
Errol Mendes, a professor at the University of Ottawa who has served as a visiting lawyer to the ICC, said the road to accountability may take years and not happen until after Trump leaves office, but is one worth pursuing. He cited the ICC’s prosecution of Serbian president Slobodan Milošević as a precedent.
“I’m not saying that (it will happen) today or tomorrow, even next year or in the next five, 10 years,” he said. “But I think for the good of humanity that it really is important for leaders in our country and others to start saying that it’s time. It’s time we set it out in black and white.”
The U.S. Congress could also investigate, and domestic military tribunals or the U.S. Justice Department could pursue a prosecution, though Goldman said those appear unlikely in the short term, given the current political climate in the U.S.
Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters Tuesday that the department has provided legal guidance to the administration throughout the war, but did not say whether Trump was following it.
