President Donald Trump on Tuesday warned that Iran’s millennia-old “civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” unless Tehran capitulates to his demand to agree to a ceasefire deal and open the Strait of Hormuz by 8 p.m. ET.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Tuesday morning.
The U.S. president has set a Tuesday night deadline for the deal. The president’s latest threat represents a major escalation in his rhetoric against Tehran, which has for weeks included explicit threats to commit war crimes by attacking Iranian civilian infrastructure including power plants and desalination plants that provide the country’s population of 90 million with fresh water.
“We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran,” Trump added.
Striking such infrastructure targets as he has promised to do this evening would almost certainly violate the Fourth Geneva Convention’s prohibitions against targeting civilian infrastructure necessary for a population’s survival.
The United States has ratified that 1949 treaty — giving it the same legal force as the U.S. Constitution — and has signed, but not ratified, a 1977 “additional protocol” that prohibits intentional attacks on “the civilian population and civilian objects.” That “additional protocol” has been binding on all U.N. member states since 1993 regardless of whether it has been ratified or merely signed.
Additionally, American criminal law prohibits the commission of war crimes, which it defines as “a grave breach in any of the international conventions signed at Geneva 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party.” The U.S. criminal code states that any person who commits war crimes can be imprisoned for life or put to death if a war crime results in the death of any victims.
But Trump’s assertion that Iranian “civilization will die” could cross a rhetorical line from threats to commit war crimes by attacking infrastructure to threats to commit what the United Nations defines as genocide against Iran’s population.
According to the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the crime of genocide is defined as any act committed with the intent of “deliberately inflicting” on a “national, ethical, racial or religious group” conditions that are “calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
The convention also states that such acts must be committed with a “proven intent… to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” that is “deliberately targeted.”
On Monday, Trump told reporters he was “not at all” concerned about committing possible war crimes in Iran, after he threatened to strike civilian infrastructure if the regime does not meet his imminent deadline to agree to a deal and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
“I’m not worried about it,” Trump said during a Monday press conference about the potential of war crimes. “You know the war crime? The war crime is allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” he added.
Asked again about the issue, he described Iran’s leaders as “animals” who had killed tens of thousands of protesters.
Trump also said that if it were his choice, he would seize Iran’s oil while simultaneously complaining that “unfortunately, the American people would like to see us come home.”
“I’d keep the oil, and I would make plenty of money,” he said.
With less than 12 hours to go until the president’s self-imposed deadline on Tuesday, the U.S. began targeting parts of Iran’s Kharg Island oil export hub, while Israeli military officials warned Iranians to avoid traveling on their country’s rail transportation network.
In response, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement that Tehran’s response would go “beyond the region” if the U.S. crosses any of its red lines and warned that the US and partners would see oil and gas supplies disrupted “for years” to come.
“Restraint is over,” they added.
