In its recent strikes in Iran, the United States widened its targeting aperture to bomb sites directly serving the Iranian population, such as electrical power plants, bridges, railway stations and roads. By doing so, the U.S. deliberately chose to inflict greater suffering on Iranian civilians. Over 500 Iranians have reportedly been injured this month, and more than 50 people, including children, have been killed. And those numbers don’t capture the full harm, such as sheer terror, caused by the destruction of items and resources vital to daily civilian life.
Attacking facilities and places that contribute to Iranian military action or are expected to do so in the future, and whose destruction provides the attacker military advantage, can be lawful — even if on a day-to-day basis such facilities and places serve ordinary civilians. That is, strikes are lawful if U.S. commanders reasonably assess that such targeted infrastructure meet the law of war’s “effective contribution to military action” test and that expected harm to civilians isn’t excessive.
Regardless of legality, the U.S. targeting Iranian infrastructure used by civilians is likely to cause far more civilian deaths than those caused by targeting purely military objects.
According to the law of war, “military action” is quite broad and can be indirect, such as a war-supporting activities and, for the U.S, even so-called war-sustaining activities. Power plants can be considered lawful military objectives even if they don’t directly serve a military base, because, according to the Department of Defense’s Law of War manual, they “are generally recognized to be of sufficient importance to a State’s capacity to meet its wartime needs of communication, transport, and industry so as usually to qualify as military objectives during armed conflicts.”
But a country cannot rely only on what’s lawful to avoid international outrage. Russia struck Ukrainian electrical power plants in the middle of winter in that ongoing war, leaving thousands of Ukrainian civilians without power. Many in the international community, including the International Criminal Court, have considered that a war crime, given that attack’s grave impact on Ukrainian civilians. This underscores that context matters.
Regardless of legality, the U.S. targeting Iranian infrastructure used by civilians is likely to cause far more civilian deaths than those caused by targeting purely military objects. And waves of attacks against such military targets earlier in this war already inflicted tremendous civilian harm. U.S. and Israeli strikes killed more than 1,400 Iranian civilians in the first three weeks of the Iran war alone. That was mostly because even purely military assets were often located in cities and towns, and the law of war permits a disturbingly high level of collateral damage in allowing their destruction. And at the start of the war, a strike on an Iranian girls’ school killed 175 people, mostly children. Reports overwhelmingly have pointed to the U.S. as responsible, but the U.S. has yet to release an investigation into the strike.
(That girls’ school strike could constitute a crime if reports are true that commanders knowingly relied on grossly outdated intelligence when ordering the strike. The military penal code would consider such deaths reckless killings, even if the strike didn’t amount to the international war crime of directly attacking civilians, given that the school didn’t appear to have been intentionally targeted as a civilian school.)
An expansion of targets to so-called “dual-use” targets that also serve civilians inches the U.S. closer to total war, one in which greater and greater civilian harm is considered acceptable. President Donald Trump has literally threatened total war since the spring, calling for war crimes and issuing threats to obliterate Iranian civilization and send Iran “back to the stone ages.”
Iran, unsurprisingly, is retaliating against Gulf States’ civilian infrastructure, seemingly with far less adherence to the law of war than the U.S. This has led to an intensifying death spiral, with civilians figuratively and, in some instances, literally caught in the crosshairs.
The Iran war was not thrust upon America. It was and is a war of choice, even if the Iranian government is uniquely egregious. Its regime killed its own citizens by the thousands this year, has sponsored terrorism in the region for decades, has constantly threatened and fomented violence against Israel and was seemingly committed to developing nuclear weapons capability.
Even so, Iran did not pose an imminent threat on Feb. 28. The Trump administration initiated this war in violation of international law (and without congressional approval), and it has waged the war without a clear strategy for success — and without American support.
The Iran war was not thrust upon America. It was and is a war of choice, even if the Iranian government is uniquely egregious.
It’s important to emphasize that targeting civilian infrastructure is only lawful after a case-by-case determination is made that such object makes an effective contribution to military action; and that its destruction offers a military advantage. Additionally, before a strike is considered lawful, commanders must direct all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm. For example, a military might strike a bridge at night when fewer civilians are expected to be in the vicinity. Finally, even after precautions (such as warnings) are considered, the planned attack is only lawful if the anticipated civilian harm (to people and objects) is not excessive relative to the expected concrete and direct military advantage to be gained from the strike.
You might wonder about water desalination plants, given Trump’s threats against them and because of reports of attacks against them. Strikes against such facilities would likely be considered a war crime if intentionally targeted, because they are indispensable to the survival of the civilian population. That affords them heightened protection under the law of war. While Iran has reportedly struck numerous such sites as recently as last week, the U.S. reportedly struck one in Iran last week.
The law of war allows for a great deal of violence, including a great deal of harm to civilians and civilian objects. But even if such strikes against civilian infrastructure are lawful, given both the civilian suffering they cause and the movement toward total war they represent, they should only be ordered when demanded by imperative military necessity — that is, as the last resort. The U.S. is nowhere near that point in Iran.
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