War Crimes

The Trump administration has allegedly committed and endorsed war crimes.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff and John Ismay at NYT:

President Trump’s threat to “obliterate” power stations in Iran if its leaders failed to open the Strait of Hormuz suggests that the United States is willing to violate international humanitarian law as part of its military campaign, according to current and former human rights officials.

“If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Saturday.

He later extended the deadline to Friday.

The president’s threat appears to be part of his erratic messaging campaign, which is often construed as bluster or misdirection.

“Trump is openly threatening a war crime,” said Kenneth Roth, a former executive director of Human Rights Watch. “And people aren’t saying anything because they’re numb to it.”

By threatening to attack civilian infrastructure, Mr. Trump has once again pushed the United States into territory more familiar to its enemies than its allies.

In 2024, the International Criminal Court issued four arrest warrants to Russian military officers and officials charging them with war crimes for attacking “Ukrainian electric infrastructure.”

International law, specifically Article 52 of the first additional protocol of the Geneva Conventions, prohibits attacks on civilian objects. These laws are meant to protect civilians and those who can no longer fight, such as wounded soldiers, from the “barbarity of war.”

Hegseth Endorses War Crime

 María Teresita Armstrong-Matta at Raw Story:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's offhand remark that the U.S. would show "no quarter, no mercy for our enemies," in Iran. In military context, "no quarter" means killing enemy combatants without allowing surrender.

This alarmed legal experts, who warned the statement could constitute a war crime. Even just saying it could count as a violation of international law and U.S. military code, they added.

Wall Street Journal national security reporter Alex Ward flagged the comment as violating international humanitarian law under the Geneva Convention.

Claremont McKenna College professor Jack Pitney cited the Defense Department's own Law of War Manual, which explicitly forbids declaring no quarter will be given. International Crisis Group senior adviser Brian Finucane, a former U.S. government war crimes lawyer, stated that even declaring no quarter constitutes a war crime punishable by up to life imprisonment under the DoD Manual for Military Commissions.

Stanford law professor Tom Dannenbaum confirmed declaring no quarter is prohibited under international humanitarian law and itself amounts to a war crime.


Watch the video below.

It violates international law. \

It violates the DOD manual on the law of war.

It violates US Code.

At Just Security,  Daniel Mauer offers the Secretary of Defense some hypothetical legal advice:

. War Crime liability under 18 U.S.C. 2441:

a. The U.S. War Crimes statute makes it a federal offense to commit a “war crime,” subject to being “fined … or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.”

b. The statute defines “war crime” by incorporating those offenses described as “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions or its additional protocols and acts specifically “prohibited by Article 23, 25, 27, or 28 of the Annex to the Hague Convention IV.”

c. As stated above, Article 23(d) in that Annex is unambiguous: “it is especially forbidden . . . [t]o declare that no quarter will be given.”

d. In describing ongoing and future combat operations in the current international armed conflict between the United States and Iran, your statement “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies” likely violates Art. 23(d) of the Annex to Hague IV and thereby violates 18 U.S.C. § 2441. This interpretation is reinforced when your remarks are considered alongside your previous public comments about the Rules of Engagement, “maximum lethality, not tepid legality,” and the laws of armed conflict noted above in para. 2.b.

e. An intention to merely cause panic and terror within the Iranian armed forces is not a defense because Article 23(d) prohibits the “declar[ation] that no quarter will be given.” It is a speech offense; under normal principles of criminal law, a command to unlawfully kill another person, even if never performed, is still prohibited (“Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal” – see 18 U.S.C. § 2). Whether the order is ever consummated by your subordinates is immaterial to your criminal exposure under 18 U.S.C. § 2441.

f. Any U.S. servicemember who interprets your comments as an order and who subsequently commands, directs, orders, or gives “no quarter” to Iranian forces will be exposed to criminal liability under Article 118, UCMJ, for murder (a premeditated killing of another with no legal justification or excuse). Such an order is “patently” or “manifestly” unlawful; therefore, a servicemember accused of murder for ordering or giving “no quarter” cannot raise an “obedience to orders” defense in their court-martial. Alternatively, servicemembers would also be exposed to prosecution in U.S. district court for violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2441.

Perfidy

Many posts have discussed foreign policy, war powers and the US military.

 Charlie Savage et al. at NYT:

The Pentagon used a secret aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane in its first attack on a boat that the Trump administration said was smuggling drugs, killing 11 people last September, according to officials briefed on the matter. The aircraft also carried its munitions inside the fuselage, rather than visibly under its wings, they said.

The nonmilitary appearance is significant, according to legal specialists, because the administration has argued its lethal boat attacks are lawful — not murders — because President Trump “determined” the United States is in an armed conflict with drug cartels.

But the laws of armed conflict prohibit combatants from feigning civilian status to fool adversaries into dropping their guard, then attacking and killing them. That is a war crime called “perfidy.”

Retired Maj. Gen. Steven J. Lepper, a former deputy judge advocate general for the United States Air Force, said that if the aircraft had been painted in a way that disguised its military nature and got close enough for the people on the boat to see it — tricking them into failing to realize they should take evasive action or surrender to survive — that was a war crime under armed-conflict standards.

...

U.S. military manuals about the law of war discuss perfidy at length, saying it includes when a combatant feigns civilian status so the adversary “neglects to take precautions which are otherwise necessary.” A U.S. Navy handbook says lawful combatants at sea use offensive force “within the bounds of military honor, particularly without resort to perfidy,” and stresses that commanders have a “duty” to “distinguish their own forces from the civilian population.”

Celebration of Death

Previous posts have discussed war crimes.

Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay at NYT:

The Trump administration’s celebration of death brings us far from discussions of the law of armed conflict, the constitutionality of the strikes or even the Christian morality that would eventually push Augustine to formulate an early version of just-war theory. We’re in the Colosseum, one brought to us digitally so that we need not leave our homes to hear the cheers of the crowd, to watch the killing done for our entertainment and suffer the same harm that injured Alypius more than 1,600 years ago.

This wounding of the national soul is hard for me to watch. Twenty years ago, I joined the Marine Corps because I thought military service would be an honorable profession. Its honor derives from fighting prowess and adherence to a code of conduct. Military training is about character formation, with virtues taught alongside tactics. But barbaric behavior tarnishes all who wear, or once wore, the uniform, and lust for cruelty turns a noble vocation into mere thuggery. “The real evils in war,” Augustine said, “are love of violence, revengeful cruelty, fierce and implacable enmity, wild resistance, and the lust of power.” Such lusts, he thought, drove the pagan world’s wars. We’d be fools not to suspect that such lusts drive some of us today.

In “The City of God,” Augustine distinguishes between a people bound by common loves and those ruled by a lust for domination. A president who wants to lead a nation bound by common loves might offer up something like Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, which sorrows over war, indulges in no bombast, accepts that both sides in a conflict have sinned and declares that we must fight “with malice toward none, with charity for all.” For a nation devoted to the lust for domination, a president needs to foster a citizenry that thrills in displays of dominance and cruelty. Hence this administration’s braggadocio about death, its officials’ memes about suffering, their promises to inflict pain on America’s enemies followed by scant rationales for their own policies.

A War Crime and an Act of War

A WP report suggests the Secretary of Defense Hegseth committed a war crime.

 

Former US military lawyers speak out

"The Former JAGs Working Group unanimously considers both the giving and the execution of these orders, if true, to constitute war crimes, murder, or both"

Statement on Media Reports of Pentagon “No Quarter” Orders in Caribbean Boat Strikes pic.twitter.com/eXo0bs4zyb

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) November 29, 2025

The president of the United States may not order offensive military action in or against Venezuela without congressional approval.

Not the Constitution nor the War Powers Resolution nor past AUMFs authorize such hostilities.

Any such orders are unconstitutional and unlawful. https://t.co/jo6UVS6K1y

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) November 29, 2025

Tyler Pager at NYT:

President Trump and his top aides have said that drug cartels present one of the most pressing dangers to the United States, and have promised to eradicate them from the Western Hemisphere.

As part of that effort, Mr. Trump signaled on Saturday that he was ratcheting up his campaign against drug cartels, saying in a social media post that airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered “CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”

Less than 24 hours earlier, Mr. Trump had announced on social media that he was granting a full pardon to Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras who had been convicted in the United States of drug trafficking charges in what was seen as a major victory for authorities in a case against a former head of state. That pardon has not yet been officially granted.

The two posts displayed a remarkable dissonance in the president’s strategy, as he moved to escalate a military campaign against drug trafficking while ordering the release of a man prosecutors said had taken “cocaine-fueled bribes” from cartels and “protected their drugs with the full power and strength of the state — military, police and justice system.” In fact, prosecutors said that Mr. Hernández, for years, allowed bricks of cocaine from Venezuela to flow through Honduras en route to the United States.