\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump on Tuesday morning threatened to completely annihilate the entirety of Iranian civilization should their government ignore his 8pm ET deadline to reopen the strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
The president\u2019s own words, posted publicly and tied to a specific deadline and set of demands, provide unusually direct evidence of intent to violate international law, and is widely being met with shock and dismay by Democrats.<\/p>\n
\u201cA whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,\u201d the US president posted on Truth Social about the country with more than 90 million people. \u201cI don\u2019t want that to happen, but it probably will.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an extremely sick person,\u201d the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said, accusing Republicans of abetting the president in plunging the US into a seemingly open-ended war. \u201cEach Republican who refuses to join us in voting against this wanton war of choice owns every consequence of whatever the hell this is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump followed with a reference to \u201ccomplete and total regime change\u201d and signed off with \u201cGod Bless the Great People of Iran\u201d, making a formulation that suggested the destruction of the state and the benediction of its people were in his telling, compatible.<\/p>\n
\u201c47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end,\u201d he wrote, referencing the Islamic regime\u2019s takeover of the country in 1979. \u201cWe will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neither the US nor Iran is a member of the international criminal court, meaning no formal ICC jurisdiction applies. The more immediate legal framework is the Geneva conventions of 1949 onwards, which both countries have ratified. Article 33 of the Fourth Convention<\/a> explicitly prohibits collective punishment of a civilian population. Article 54 of Additional Protocol I<\/a> \u2013 whose core principles are binding as customary international law even on states, like the US and Iran, that never ratified it \u2013 prohibits attacks on infrastructure indispensable to civilian survival, with only a narrow exception for objects used exclusively to sustain enemy armed forces.<\/p>\n