Trump Revels in Threats to Commit War Crimes in Iran (NYT Gift link)

[LetMyPeopleVote]

The president said he would bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages.” Until this administration, American leaders had insisted they were trying to follow international law in war.

Link to tweet

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/05/us/politics/trump-iran-war-crimes-truth-social.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Y1A.BMK1.zXHp4c4xnLbY&smid=tw-share

Power plants, desalination stations, oil wells, roads, bridges and other infrastructure.

They are the foundations of civilian life in Iran, and their destruction by American and Israeli forces would cause widespread suffering among the country’s 93 million people — and in most cases would be considered a war crime under international law.....

The president was emphatic about the targets in a follow-up post: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. 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.”,.....

No other recent American president has talked so openly about committing potential war crimes, legal experts, historians and former U.S. officials say. Wartime American presidents and their aides have usually insisted they were trying to follow international and U.S. military law, even if they violated it in some cases.

International laws aimed at preventing the horrors of total war are codified in a series of agreements, including the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, the Nuremberg Principles and the United Nations Charter. Deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure violate those. So does pillaging a country, which Mr. Trump has suggested he might do by taking Iran’s oil.....

The American president has been unambiguous in his disdain for international law. In a two-hour Oval Office interview in January with The New York Times, Mr. Trump declared, “I don’t need international law.” When asked whether there was any limit on his global powers, he said, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality.”....

The administration’s language has alarmed many legal experts, who say the signal being sent to U.S. service members — and to foreign nations, including adversaries — shapes behavior on the battlefield.

One hundred legal experts and lawyers voiced their concerns in an open letter published by Just Security last week. They said that the conduct of the war and rhetoric of U.S. officials “raise serious concerns about violations of international humanitarian law, including potential war crimes.”

They pointed out that the very act of the United States’ attacking Iran is a violation of the U.N. Charter, since there is no evidence Mr. Trump was acting to defend his country against an imminent threat. And the president did not get congressional authorization for the war, in violation of the Constitution......

During a standoff with Iran in his first administration, Mr. Trump threatened to destroy 52 cultural sites in the country. Mark T. Esper, then the defense secretary, acknowledged that hitting such sites would be a war crime and said the Pentagon would not do it.

The second Trump administration has taken a different approach.

trump could end up like Putin and being unable to leave the US and visit any country that respects international law.

[pat_k]

1. TY NYTimes.

These headlines should be dominating every newsfeed:


"Trump declares his intent to commit war crimes and turn the United States into a global pariah"

"Trump promises to sentence millions of innocent Iranians to death if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened"

"Destruction of Iran's power plants, oil wells, and desalinization plants would cause catastrophic civilian deaths that would rapidly exceed the combined total of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and could ultimately cause the death of millions.

And more... Call for suggestions

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. MaddowBlog-Trump abandons all subtlety with talk of possible war crimes in Iran

As the president weighs strikes on civilian targets in Iran, the video from Democratic veterans about rejecting illegal orders is newly relevant.

As Trump leans into possible war crimes in Iran, that “don’t follow illegal orders” video from Democratic veterans — and the hysterical White House response — is relevant anew.
www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-04-06T15:50:26.130Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-abandons-all-subtlety-with-talk-of-possible-war-crimes-in-iran

As the third week of the war with Iran came to an end, Donald Trump published a different kind of threat to his social media platform: If Iran failed to fully open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, he wrote, the United States would start destroying civilian power plants in the country.....

Trump’s Easter morning madness generated headlines for various reasons, but among the more notable was that his online missive included explicit vows to target Iranian power plants and bridges. As the day progressed, the president did brief, one-on-one interviews with several media outlets to echo that point. The Wall Street Journal reported:

President Trump threatened to destroy all of Iran’s power plants if the country’s leaders don’t agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by Tuesday evening, ratcheting up pressure on Tehran.

‘If they don’t come through, if they want to keep it closed, they’re going to lose every power plant and every other plant they have in the whole country,’ Trump said in an eight-minute interview with The Wall Street Journal on Sunday.

Other news organizations heard similar comments. Trump told ABC News, for example, that he’s prepared to “blow up the whole country.” He also told Fox News, “I’m considering blowing everything up and taking over the oil.”.....

The New York Times reported on the degree to which the president has steered the nation in radical directions:

No other recent American president has talked so openly about committing potential war crimes, legal experts, historians and former U.S. officials say. Wartime American presidents and their aides have usually insisted they were trying to follow international and U.S. military law, even if they violated it in some cases.

International laws aimed at preventing the horrors of total war are codified in a series of agreements, including the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, the Nuremberg Principles and the United Nations Charter. Deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure violate those. So does pillaging a country, which Mr. Trump has suggested he might do by taking Iran’s oil.

......Nearly six months ago, six Democratic military and intelligence veterans appeared in a video to urge service members to reject illegal orders. This sparked apoplexy within the administration, as if it were outrageous to remind service members to follow the law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (Trump’s Justice Department ultimately tried to indict the lawmakers on charges of seditious conspiracy — charges that, if they resulted in a conviction, would have sent the lawmakers to prison for many years. Regular citizens on the grand jury rebuffed the ridiculous gambit in late February.)

The White House’s hysterics about that video and its emphasis on service members following the law is newly relevant as Trump weighs the possibility of war crimes.