Indeed, this seems to be what supporters of Trump are leaning on, as you can make the argument that _any_ bridge, or _any_ powerplant could hypothetically be used by the military, and that this conflict is sufficiently important for the livelihood of people in America/"The West" that doing anything that even slightly helps tips the odds is justifiable.
There’s a reason that past generations tried to draw a line in the sand and say “we will not cross this line.” It was imperfect and often violated, but at least it served to frame actions as just or unjust. Blatant violations could catalyze domestic opposition to unjust war, as in Vietnam and Iraq. Now that the standard has been eroded into nothing, I don’t know if we can stop further escalation.
A lot of war is about economics and logistics.
Edit: to add, what about Iran's threats to destroy water supplies?
The purpose, the idea behind warcrimes is that when warcrimes occur, the world would unite, in the security council, a mandate would be voted in, and the whole world would intervene, preventing warcrimes from occuring, or at least from repeating.
Well, when it comes to Iranian and US warcrimes the UNSC, specifically France, Russia and China have declared there will be no consequence to any warcrime by either side. In France's case it's not that they don't think warcrimes are terrible crimes, it's that they don't want to help anyone.
In Russia and China's case it's that they think this war destabilizes the west and that matters more to them than terrible crimes. Oh and the whole communist stick of "it's not warcrimes, it's internal matters", you know, when they do it to their population. So they have declared they will actively fight to prevent anything being done about warcrimes.
Under those circumstances, of course, warcrimes effectively don't exist, and that's that. Or to put it another way: the world is perfectly happy for you to be discussing the finer points of international law and why this and that is or isn't "a crime".
But the world is totally unwilling to do anything about warcrimes. I mean, let's be realistic. The world is unwilling to do anything about Iranian warcrimes, and perfectly certain the US won't commit any (the US will make mistakes, of course, but not actually commit real warcrimes). Whatever the outcome of your discussion on what is and isn't a heinous crime ... there will be no consequences.
If I were a lawyer responsible for defending Trump in the Hague, I'd argue that the tweet was actually an abbreviated way of saying "If Iran does not comply, we will destroy all military assets, including but not limited to their ICBMs, Bridges, and Power Stations, such that we have total military dominance."
Now very obviously (to me at least) this was not the intent of the message, but I don't know whether you could prove that in a hypothetical war crimes trial.
The slippery slope.
How about each country sets up a blockade and demands their toll for safe passage?
The only sensible strategy is to make IRGC capitulate.
The fact that the US seemed surprised they shut down the strait is such an immense intelligence failure.
If anyone by this point think there will be any meaningful change in Iranian society that won't be shoved down their throats imperialist style, they shouldn't be in politics or military intelligence. They should be selling pencils from a cup.
Whatever aims the US had with this illegal war, we should all admit they are a lost cause.
Unless the US allows for immense civilian suffering, I think Iran will outlast any US political patience for this war
There's a singular failure point. Trump was properly informed and just said "nah, they are gonna collapse before they do it".
https://armscontrolcenter.org/irans-stockpile-of-highly-enri...
https://armscontrolcenter.org/uranium-enrichment-for-peace-o...
By our ideas, hitting power plants and such infra will not effect IRGC by any means, IRGC hates it's own people ( aka Iranians who uprised against them so many times, last being less than 2 months ago leading to 40k+ civilian deaths), it'll just make the economy many times worse for us than it is. IRGC will run it's infra even if it means full blackout of the civilians.
At this point of time I'm getting ready to be laid off cuz our jobs are non existent now ( I am a fellow software engineer)
For next couple of months, life's gonna be shit, either the strikes will end it, or the IRGC. Wonder what we gotta do.
whoops, was responding to someone but accidentally top levelled this comment, which id rather leave here even though it lacks context -- something about levies on ship transit, which isnt really that much different to global tariffs is it?
