Mick Ryan
On Easter Sunday, the President of the United States formally announced that his military would destroy Iranian power plants and bridges on Tuesday unless Iran reopened the Strait of Hormuz. The post was signed with his full name and title. It was, by any reasonable definition, a declaration of intent to conduct a specific category of military strike against civilian infrastructure on a specific day.
At a press conference on 6 April, Trump doubled down on these threats, while also offering deluded statements about Iranian communications being intercepted saying “please keep bombing”.
The potential legal and ethical problems are grave. The US Department of Defense Law of War Manual permits strikes on power grids and bridges when they make an effective contribution to enemy military action and when the military advantage outweighs civilian harm. But it also requires that the advantage be military, not political. Threatening to destroy a country’s power supply to force a diplomatic concession is not a military advantage under any honest reading of that standard.
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