Members of the Trump administration suggested to reporters that the president was bluffing when he threatened Iran. but on Sunday, Trump threatened Iranian power plants.
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Trump posted in part on Truth Social:
We are offering a very fair and reasonable deal, and I hope they accept it because if they don’t, the United States is going to destroy every power plant and every bridge in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE BOY! They will fall quickly, they will fall easily, and if they do not accept the DEAL, it will be my honor to do what must be done, what should have been done to Iran, by other presidents, over the last 47 years.
Amnesty International said in a statement after Trump first threatened to commit war crimes: “International humanitarian law strictly prohibits direct attacks against civilians and civilian objects. The US president’s threat of extermination and irreparable destruction brazenly destroys the fundamental rules of international humanitarian law, with potentially catastrophic consequences for more than 90 million people. It may constitute a threat to commit genocide, a crime defined by the Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as the commission of one or more defined acts “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such.
We’ve already discussed what it means for Trump and members of his administration to potentially commit war crimes, but what could it mean for the troops who Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth might ask to commit crimes that many Americans increasingly view as genocide?