President Trump's public threats to obliterate Iran's civilian infrastructure have created a potential legal minefield for military officers, according to military law experts who warn that carrying out such attacks could violate established rules of warfare.
The core issue is straightforward: international law prohibits targeting civilian infrastructure, even during wartime. Yet Trump has repeatedly vowed to destroy bridges, power plants, and other facilities serving Iranian civilians, including a posting Tuesday in which he promised "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again."
Rachel VanLandingham, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who previously advised U.S. Central Command on international law, told Axios that the U.S. military has historically interpreted rules governing dual-use infrastructure in an increasingly permissive way. Trump's rhetoric, she warned, could push that interpretation to "the most extreme" point possible.
Experts go further. VanLandingham and over 100 other lawyers, academics, and former government officials have argued that Trump's threats themselves constitute war crimes, since threatening mass civilian violence primarily to terrorize a population violates international law.
When asked Monday whether the U.S. might commit war crimes in Iran, Trump dismissed the concern. "You know the war crime? The war crime is allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon," he told reporters.
The White House pushed back against criticism, with spokesperson Anna Kelly stating that "Iran can never have a nuclear weapon" and that the Iranian people "welcome the sound of bombs because it means their oppressors are losing." Kelly added that greater destruction could be avoided if the Iranian regime "makes a deal with the United States."
So far, American strikes have focused on military and nuclear targets, though human rights groups have documented civilian casualties, including children. But the gap between current operations and Trump's stated intentions looms large.
The deeper legal problem involves what happens when a president orders military personnel to execute plans that international law experts deem unlawful. Brian Finucane, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group and former State Department legal adviser, noted that officers have already faced this tension in previous operations.
A critical wrinkle emerged this week: if the Department of Justice formally blesses an order as lawful, "it makes it much harder for anyone to push back," Finucane said. When asked Tuesday whether Trump's threats constituted possible war crimes, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said only that the DOJ "supports the Department of War, the White House, the Department of State."
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reinforced that alignment, recently removing top military lawyers he viewed as obstacles to implementing Trump's agenda.
Individual criminal accountability for indiscriminate attacks remains unlikely, VanLandingham acknowledged, citing the political and legal difficulty of prosecuting war crimes. But Finucane offered a broader concern: "the U.S. president should not put service members in a position where they have to decide whether to follow the law of war or follow his orders."
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