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The war on Iran and the war in Ukraine have also been wars of words. Those words, like the events they are words about, have been war crimes.<\/p>\n
In the past weeks, the wars of words have been marked by dueling rants by erstwhile allies. Each wants the other in each other\u2019s war. During a G7 ministers meeting on March 27, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas lost her patience with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Reminding him that he had said the U.S. itself would run out of patience if Russia didn\u2019t go along with U.S. efforts to end the war,\u00a0she demanded of Rubio<\/a>, \u201cA year has passed and Russia hasn\u2019t moved. When is your patience going to run out?\u201d An \u201cannoyed\u201d Rubio shot back, \u201cWe are doing the best we can to end the war. If you think you can do it better, go ahead. We will step aside.\u201d That was precisely the effect Kallas did not want her words to have.<\/p>\n In a barrage of Truth Social posts and comments to reporters, U.S. President Donald Trump said that the U.S. had helped Europe in its war and blasted them for not helping the U.S. in theirs. \u201cWe\u2019re always there for NATO,\u201d Trump\u00a0said<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019re helping them with Ukraine\u2026. Doesn\u2019t affect us, but we\u2019ve helped them. It\u2019d be interesting to see what country wouldn\u2019t help us.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf there\u2019s no response or if it\u2019s a negative response,\u201d he\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0Financial Times<\/em>, \u201cI think it will be very bad for the future of NATO.\u201d \u201cI think NATO \u200bis making a very foolish mistake,\u201d\u00a0he said<\/a>. \u201cThe United States have to remember that \u200bbecause we think it\u2019s pretty shocking.\u201d He\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0the NATO nations \u201cCOWARDS\u201d and warned that the U.S. \u201cwill REMEMBER!\u201d On March 31, Trump\u00a0posted<\/a>, \u201cYou\u2019ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won\u2019t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren\u2019t there for us.\u201d<\/p>\n The next day, Trump again compared the American response in Ukraine to the NATO response in Iran and launched\u00a0his clearest threat yet<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019ve been there automatically, including Ukraine. Ukraine wasn\u2019t our problem. It was a test, and we were there for them, and we would always have been there for them. They weren\u2019t there for us.\u201d Asked if he would reconsider U.S. membership in NATO, Trump replied, \u201cOh yes, I would say [it\u2019s] beyond reconsideration.\u201d Later the same day, he\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0he would stop supplying weapons to Ukraine if European nations continue to refuse to help open the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n There are multiple reasons why America\u2019s European and NATO allies have not answered Trump\u2019s call to join the war. They were not respected. They were not consulted. The goals of the war were not articulated. The benefits were not clear while the cost was very clear. But, most importantly, they have not joined the war because it is illegal.<\/p>\n Germany\u00a0called the war<\/a>\u00a0\u201can interventionist one\u201d\u00a0that is<\/a>\u00a0in \u201cviolation of international law.\u201d Spain\u00a0called for<\/a>\u00a0\u201cNO\u2026 violations of international law,\u201d and France\u00a0declared<\/a>\u00a0that the strikes on Iran \u201cwere conducted outside international law, which we cannot approve of.\u201d<\/p>\n Article 2.3 of the\u00a0UN Charter<\/a>\u00a0demands that member states \u201csettle their international disputes by peaceful means.\u201d Article 2.4 requires all members to \u201crefrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.\u201d This norm has no exemptions and cannot be modified, including, according to the International Court of Justice, in self-defense. The war on Iran was legitimized neither by Security Council authorization nor by an immediate need for self-defense. It is an illegal war.<\/p>\n From the fact that the war on Iran is an illegal war, it follows that each strike on Iran during the war is illegal, including the use of three precision missiles to strike a girls\u2019 elementary school and killing at least 175 people, most of whom were children. The school had been \u201cclearly separate<\/a>\u00a0from an adjacent military site for at least 10 years.\u201d On March 7, the U.S. struck a water desalination plant on Qeshm Island in Iran, forcing thirty villages to relocate to the mainland.<\/p>\n But it isn\u2019t just the bombs and missiles that are in violation of international law. Almost every word that has come out of the White House is a war crime.<\/p>\n U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth set the stage. On March 2, he called the gameplan,\u00a0saying<\/a>\u00a0the war would be fought by the U.S. with \u201cNo stupid rules of engagement.\u201d This time, he said, there would be \u201cno politically correct wars.\u201d Those \u201cdumb, politically correct wars<\/a>\u00a0of the past\u201d are \u201cthe opposite\u201d of what the U.S. would do to Iran. In this war, waged in the Department of War fashion,\u00a0the U.S. military would<\/a>\u00a0provide \u201cno quarter, no mercy for our enemies.\u201d That declaration is defined in the Pentagon\u2019s law of war manual as a war crime, as are a host of declarations listed by the International Committee of the Red Cross.<\/p>\n In a March 13\u00a0Truth Social Post<\/a>, Trump called the Iranian leadership \u201cderanged scumbags\u201d and said that it is \u201ca great honor\u201d to be killing them.<\/p>\n He has repeatedly threatened to obliterate Iran\u2019s power plants and energy infrastructure and has linked that to Iran capitulating in negotiations. As Amnesty International has\u00a0pointed out<\/a>, such threats, if acted upon, \u201cwould unleash catastrophic harm on millions of citizens.\u201d These are the same citizens Trump has claimed to aid and protect. Amnesty states that \u201cTrump must retract [these] deeply irresponsible threats\u2026. based on the USA\u2019s obligations under international humanitarian law to avoid civilian harm.\u201d<\/p>\n On March 30, Trump\u00a0threatened<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cif for any reason a deal is not shortly reached\u2026 we will conclude our lovely \u201cstay\u201d in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!).\u201d<\/p>\n Every word of the post is a war crime. The deprivation of energy and some of Iran\u2019s water could create a humanitarian crisis for millions of Iranians.\u00a0Article 54 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Convention<\/a>\u00a0explicitly includes \u201cdrinking water installations\u201d under the category of things \u201cit is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless\u201d because they are \u201cindispensable to the survival of the civilian population.\u201d The threat uses energy and water needed by the people of Iran as leverage in negotiations with the government.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s threat, made in his\u00a0April 1 address<\/a>, to \u201csimultaneously\u201d \u201chit each and every one of their electric-generating plants\u201d and their oil and \u201cbring them back to the stone ages, where they belong,\u201d is, at best, the threat of collective punishment.<\/p>\n Moving the war of words to an unprecedented level, Trump again openly threatened war crimes in\u00a0a post on Sunday<\/a>, saying, \u201cTuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There Will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin\u2019 Strait, you crazy bastards, or you\u2019ll be living in Hell -JUST WATCH!\u201d<\/p>\n