唐纳德·特朗普总统是威胁伊朗一些战争法专家认为这是非法的。
特朗普周日表示，如果伊朗不同意外交解决战争的有利条款，“他们将失去他们在整个国家的每一座发电厂和每一座其他工厂。”
总统表示，伊朗平民将支持罢工，因为这将使德黑兰政权更接近特朗普渴望的投降。
特朗普周一在白宫新闻发布会上说:“我们有-我们有一个计划，因为我们的军事力量，伊朗的每座桥梁都将在明天晚上12点前被摧毁，伊朗的每座发电厂都将被关闭，燃烧，爆炸，永远不会再被使用，”他说，这次行动只需要四个小时。
川普曾表示，他希望伊朗控制过境的霍尔木兹海峡在周二晚上8点前重新开放。
周一，当被问及他威胁摧毁伊朗基础设施是否构成战争罪时，特朗普回答说，“你知道战争罪吗?战争罪是允许伊朗拥有核武器。”
战争法专家表示，特朗普的大规模威胁代表着可能犯下多项战争罪的威胁。国际法禁止对民众进行集体惩罚和以受保护的民用基础设施为目标。特朗普还表示，他想拿走伊朗的石油，这可能相当于掠夺，也是法律所禁止的。
美国已将制定武装冲突期间人道主义标准的日内瓦公约纳入其国内法，要求服役人员遵守这些标准。
伊拉克战争期间担任美国中央司令部国际法主任的退休空军中校雷切尔·范兰丁厄姆(Rachel VanLandingham)和曾在陆军军法署任职的前美国助理检察官玛格丽特·多诺万(Margaret Donovan)在书中写道只是安全他们写道，特朗普威胁要在伊朗发动“全面战争”，“完全拒绝美国出于务实和道德原因纳入美国军事行动法律的法律限制”。
2011年至2021年在国务院担任律师顾问的布莱恩·菲纽肯(Brian Finucane)表示，任何关于伊朗武装部队将民用基础设施用于军事目的的发现都将是“事实密集型”的。
菲纽肯说:“原则上，如果你能证明一个发电厂对敌人的军事行动做出了有效的贡献，并且摧毁它会产生一定的军事优势，那么它就可能成为你可以瞄准的军事目标。”
例如，专门为导弹工厂发电的发电厂就是一个允许的目标。
菲纽肯说:“这里的问题是，总统说，‘不，我们正在摧毁所有这些武器。’”“并不是伊朗所有的发电厂都是军事目标。”
据报道，1999年，当美国和北约在南斯拉夫发动空袭时，五角大楼的目标是配电设施，而不是发电设施人权观察。大多数袭击没有使用炸药，而是使用碳纤维炸弹使设施瘫痪，而不是摧毁它们。
VanLandingham称之为采取“攻击预防措施”的“操作化”她说，这些方法是“法律要求的”，以确保造福平民的关键基础设施能够迅速恢复。
特朗普周一表示，伊朗人“希望听到炸弹，因为他们希望自由。”没有证据支持他的说法。
今年3月，在国会山的一次听证会上，美国欧洲司令部司令、空军上将阿列克萨斯·格林科维奇(Alexus Grynkewich)表示，他正在密切关注俄罗斯在乌克兰针对民用电力基础设施的大范围行动。
“我在研究历史上的空中力量的过程中观察到的是，任何时候你攻击平民人口，你通常会发现这只会坚定他们的决心，”这位将军告诉参议员。
在接受美国广播公司采访时，武装冲突法专家指出，虽然这些法律旨在减轻平民的伤害和痛苦，但它们首先是为了防止战争。
VanLandingham说，政府在其言论和社交媒体帖子中“庆祝破坏，暴力，暴力的图像”，她称之为“危险的转变”。
她说:“我们所拥有的是对一个基本概念的承诺的侵蚀，即战争是不好的——因为它造成的痛苦而令人遗憾，应该不惜一切代价避免战争。
菲纽肯说，美国“出于很好的理由同意这些规则”。
“最重要的规则是在两次世界大战和大屠杀的恐怖之后禁止使用武力的门槛规则。美国在制定《联合国宪章》中发挥了关键作用...禁止在没有自卫或联合国授权的情况下发动战争。“美国发动这场战争违反了这条关键规则。”
Trump's threats against Iran could be war crimes if carried out, some experts say
President Donald Trump isthreatening Iranwith an assault that some experts in the laws of war say would be illegal.
Trump said Sunday that if Iran did not agree to favorable terms for a diplomatic settlement of the war, "they're going to lose every power plant and every other plant they have in the whole country."
The president has said civilians in Iran would support the strikes because it would bring the Tehran regime closer to the capitulation Trump desires.
"We have -- we have a plan because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by twelve o'clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again," Trump said at a White House press conference Monday, saying the operation would take only four hours.
Trump has said he wants the Strait of Hormuz, through which Iran controls transit, to be reopened by 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Asked Monday if his threats to destroy Iran's infrastructure amounted to a war crimes, Trump answered, "You know the war crime? The war crime is allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon."
Experts in the laws of war say Trump's wholesale threat represents a threat to commit perhaps a number of war crimes. Collective punishment on a population and the targeting of protected civilian infrastructure are prohibited under international law. Trump has also said he'd like to take Iran's oil, which could amount to pillaging, also barred under the law.
The U.S. has incorporated the Geneva Conventions, which set humanitarian standards during armed conflict, into its own domestic law, subjecting service members to them.
Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Rachel VanLandingham, who served as the chief of international law at U.S. Central Command during the Iraq war, and Margaret Donovan, a former assistant U.S. attorney who served in the Army's Judge Advocate General Corps, writing inJust Security, said Trump has threatened "total war" in Iran, "a complete rejection of the legal limits the United States has incorporated into the law governing U.S. military operations for both pragmatic and moral reasons," they wrote.
Brian Finucane, who was an attorney-advisor at the State Department from 2011 to 2021, said any finding that Iranian armed forces were using civilian infrastructure for military means would be a "fact-intensive" one.
"In principle, a power plant might be able to be a military objective that you could target if you could show that it was making an effective contribution to the enemy's military action, and that the destruction of it would yield some definite military advantage," Finucane said.
A power plant that generated power exclusively for a missile factory, for example, would be a permissible target.
"[The] problem here is that the president says, 'No, we're destroying all of them,'" Finucane said. "It's not the case that all power plants in Iran are military objectives."
In 1999, when the U.S. and NATO launched an air war over Yugoslavia, the Pentagon targeted power distribution facilities but not generation facilities, according toHuman Rights Watch. Instead of using explosives, most attacks used carbon fiber bombs that incapacitated the facilities instead of destroying them.
VanLandingham called that an "operationalization" of taking "precautions in attack." These methods are "legally required" to ensure critical infrastructure benefitting civilians can be quickly restored, she said.
Trump said Monday that Iranians "want to hear bombs because they want to be free." There is no evidence to support his claim.
In a hearing on Capitol Hill in March, Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich, who is the commander of U.S. European Command, said he was watching closely the widespread targeting of civilian power infrastructure by Russia in Ukraine.
"What I've observed over the course of studying air power in history is that any time you attack a civilian population, you usually end up finding that it just hardens their resolve," the general told senators.
In interviews with ABC News, experts in the law of armed conflict pointed out that while the laws are meant to mitigate civilian harm and suffering, they are in the first place designed to prevent the war.
VanLandingham said the administration is "celebrating the destruction, the violence, the imagery of violence" in its rhetoric and social media posts in what she called a "dangerous shift."
"What we have is an erosion of a commitment to the basic concept that war is bad -- that it is regrettable because of the suffering it causes and should be avoided at almost all cost," she said.
The U.S. "agreed to these rules for very good reasons," Finucane said.
"The most important rule is the threshold rule prohibiting the use of force after the horrors of the two world wars and the Holocaust. The U.S. played a critical role in establishing the [United Nations] Charter, which ... prohibits going to war absent self-defense or authorization from the U.N.," he said. "And the U.S. has violated that critical rule by launching this war."
