Trump’s ‘Stone Age’ threats against Iran spark war crimes alarm
A US B-52H Stratofortress bomber aircraft during Operation Epic Fury.
Photo: US Air Force via AFP Threatening to destroy Iran’s electricity grid and to reduce the country of 90 million to destitution, US President Donald Trump is shattering precedent by not just accepting but gloating about acts seen as potential war crimes.
The consequences for Trump, at least in the near term, are probably none, experts say, as his administration works hard to undermine international institutions tasked with keeping norms.
The Geneva Conventions governing the laws of war, agreed following World War II, prohibit destruction of “objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population”.
In 2024, the International Criminal Court indicted four Russian military officials over systematic strikes on Ukraine’s power grid.
US President Donald Trump giving a national address about the Iran war on Wednesday.
Photo: AP Nonetheless, Trump said in a Wednesday address that if Iran does not reach an unspecified deal with him, US forces would “hit each and every one of their electric-generating plants”. “Over the next two to three weeks, we are going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong,” Trump said, a shift in tone after briefly suggesting, when joining Israel in launching the war on February 28, that a goal was to help Iranians overthrow their unpopular religious-led government.
On Thursday, Trump posted footage of the destruction of a major bridge, promising “Much more to follow!” And Iran reported major damage to a century-old medical research centre, the Pasteur Institute.
Trump has also threatened to attack oil wells, despite international condemnation of Iraqi forces who set ablaze oil installations when withdrawing from Kuwait in 1991 in the first Gulf War.
Over 100 international law experts in the US, including from schools like Harvard, Yale, Stanford and the University of California, said in the letter released on Thursday that the conduct of US forces and statements by senior US officials “raise serious concerns about violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including potential war crimes”.
The letter particularly noted a mid-March comment from Trump where he said the US may conduct strikes on Iran “just for fun”.
It also cited comments from Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth from early March in which he said the US does not fight with “stupid rules of engagement”.
The letter was published on the web
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