The war on Iran and the war in Ukraine have also been wars of words. Those words, like the events they are words about, have been war crimes.
In the past weeks, the wars of words have been marked by dueling rants by erstwhile allies. Each wants the other in each other’s war. During a G7 ministers meeting on March 27, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas lost her patience with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Reminding him that he had said the U.S. itself would run out of patience if Russia didn’t go along with U.S. efforts to end the war, she demanded of Rubio, “A year has passed and Russia hasn’t moved. When is your patience going to run out?” An “annoyed” Rubio shot back, “We are doing the best we can to end the war. If you think you can do it better, go ahead. We will step aside.” That was precisely the effect Kallas did not want her words to have.
In a barrage of Truth Social posts and comments to reporters, U.S. President Donald Trump said that the U.S. had helped Europe in its war and blasted them for not helping the U.S. in theirs. “We’re always there for NATO,” Trump said. “We’re helping them with Ukraine…. Doesn’t affect us, but we’ve helped them. It’d be interesting to see what country wouldn’t help us.”
“If there’s no response or if it’s a negative response,” he told the Financial Times, “I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO.” “I think NATO is making a very foolish mistake,” he said. “The United States have to remember that because we think it’s pretty shocking.” He called the NATO nations “COWARDS” and warned that the U.S. “will REMEMBER!” On March 31, Trump posted, “You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us.”
The next day, Trump again compared the American response in Ukraine to the NATO response in Iran and launched his clearest threat yet. “We’ve been there automatically, including Ukraine. Ukraine wasn’t our problem. It was a test, and we were there for them, and we would always have been there for them. They weren’t there for us.” Asked if he would reconsider U.S. membership in NATO, Trump replied, “Oh yes, I would say [it’s] beyond reconsideration.” Later the same day, he said he would stop supplying weapons to Ukraine if European nations continue to refuse to help open the Strait of Hormuz.
There are multiple reasons why America’s European and NATO allies have not answered Trump’s call to join the war. They were not respected. They were not consulted. The goals of the war were not articulated. The benefits were not clear while the cost was very clear. But, most importantly, they have not joined the war because it is illegal.
Germany called the war “an interventionist one” that is in “violation of international law.” Spain called for “NO… violations of international law,” and France declared that the strikes on Iran “were conducted outside international law, which we cannot approve of.”
Article 2.3 of the UN Charter demands that member states “settle their international disputes by peaceful means.” Article 2.4 requires all members to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” This norm has no exemptions and cannot be modified, including, according to the International Court of Justice, in self-defense. The war on Iran was legitimized neither by Security Council authorization nor by an immediate need for self-defense. It is an illegal war.
From the fact that the war on Iran is an illegal war, it follows that each strike on Iran during the war is illegal, including the use of three precision missiles to strike a girls’ elementary school and killing at least 175 people, most of whom were children. The school had been “clearly separate from an adjacent military site for at least 10 years.” On March 7, the U.S. struck a water desalination plant on Qeshm Island in Iran, forcing thirty villages to relocate to the mainland.
But it isn’t just the bombs and missiles that are in violation of international law. Almost every word that has come out of the White House is a war crime.
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth set the stage. On March 2, he called the gameplan, saying the war would be fought by the U.S. with “No stupid rules of engagement.” This time, he said, there would be “no politically correct wars.” Those “dumb, politically correct wars of the past” are “the opposite” of what the U.S. would do to Iran. In this war, waged in the Department of War fashion, the U.S. military would provide “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.” That declaration is defined in the Pentagon’s law of war manual as a war crime, as are a host of declarations listed by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
In a March 13 Truth Social Post, Trump called the Iranian leadership “deranged scumbags” and said that it is “a great honor” to be killing them.
He has repeatedly threatened to obliterate Iran’s power plants and energy infrastructure and has linked that to Iran capitulating in negotiations. As Amnesty International has pointed out, such threats, if acted upon, “would unleash catastrophic harm on millions of citizens.” These are the same citizens Trump has claimed to aid and protect. Amnesty states that “Trump must retract [these] deeply irresponsible threats…. based on the USA’s obligations under international humanitarian law to avoid civilian harm.”
On March 30, Trump threatened that “if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached… we will conclude our lovely “stay” in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!).”
Every word of the post is a war crime. The deprivation of energy and some of Iran’s water could create a humanitarian crisis for millions of Iranians. Article 54 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Convention explicitly includes “drinking water installations” under the category of things “it is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless” because they are “indispensable to the survival of the civilian population.” The threat uses energy and water needed by the people of Iran as leverage in negotiations with the government.
Trump’s threat, made in his April 1 address, to “simultaneously” “hit each and every one of their electric-generating plants” and their oil and “bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong,” is, at best, the threat of collective punishment.
Moving the war of words to an unprecedented level, Trump again openly threatened war crimes in a post on Sunday, saying, “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!”
The threat moved Iran to plead that “If the conscience of the United Nations were alive, it would not remain silent in the face of the overt and shameless threat… of intent to commit war crimes.”
The post was offensive and shocking not just for its language and its unveiled threat of war crimes on civilian infrastructure, but for its invocation of Allah in the bombing of the Islamic Republic. Trump closed his threat to the people of Iran with the words, “Praise be to Allah.”
Not only can bombs violate international law. The UN Charter prohibits, not only the “use of force,” but “the threat” of force. The war on Iran is illegal. The missiles and bombs falling on Iran are illegal. And the words coming out of Washington are illegal. Many of the words spoken by the White House and the Department of War may be war crimes.
