Did Trump Say He's Going to Commit War Crimes?
April 7, 2026 8:05am
About an hour ago, President Trump posted to his Truth Social account that "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again." Ever since Donald Trump went down the escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015 to announce his run for the presidency, I have described him as a carnival barker. He's a man who would say whatever it takes to get someone to pay a dollar to enter his tent; and then he'd say the exact opposite to get another man to pay the dollar to enter his tent. So I've always understood his words to be empty rhetoric. What matters to me has always been his actions not his words. Having said that, the words he posted today matter. If he's just being a bombastic blowhard in an effort to get Iran to capitulate, then it is par for the course for this President. But if he follows through with military action that kills a large number of civilians or damages a significant amount civilian infrastructure, then this morning's post would be used against him in war crimes accusations.
Last week, President Trump said that if Iran did not open the Strait of Hormuz and agree to his terms, he would order the United States military to "hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard" to "bring them back to the stone ages where they belong." The problem with bloviating like that is that the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure is a war crime under most circumstances. Article 52 of the 1977 Geneva Conventions does not permit the destruction of "civilian objects" unless doing so offers definite military advantage.
Donald Trump also threatened to destroy Iran's water desalination plants. If those desalination plants are solely, or even primarily, to provide fresh water to military installations, then they would be legitimate targets. But those desalination plants provide drinking water to the civilian population. The fact that military personnel also drink some of it is irrelevant. What matters is proportionality. If the U.S. military destroys Iran's ability to provide drinking water to its citizens, it will immediately spark a crisis of thirst, hunger, disease, and death throughout the civilian population. While I have heard some people dismiss that as irrelevant because they support the total and complete destruction of Iran and the Iranians, the reality is that destroying electric generation facilities and desalination plants would be counterproductive to America's ability to influence a post-war Iran. It would be quite difficult to gain the support of the Iranian people if we create an artificial drought and starve them. Trump also runs the risk that Iran would retaliate by targeting desalination plants in Arab Gulf states allied with the United States. That would expand any humanitarian crisis beyond Iran's borders. And it would take many years to rebuild that infrastructure.
Because deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure and essential civilian services can constitute war crimes, Trump publicly stating that as an objective removes any credible explanation of it being justified collateral damage. Trump said he believes the Iranian people are willing to suffer more bombings to gain freedom. That's true. Many decent Iranians are. But not if it means they or their families will die of thirst or starvation in the aftermath.
That same Truth Social post also claimed that "we have complete and total regime change where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail." That is complete nonsense. He may be secretly negotiating with smarter and less radicalized people, but the mad mullahs are still in charge. More accurately, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is probably really in charge. The Jerusalem Post reported this morning that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is unconscious at a hospital in Qom. The report is unconfirmed. But regardless, he hasn't been seen in public since he assumed the role of his deceased father on March 8th.
I have supported this war from the very beginning with the critically important caveat that it must not end until the theocrats in Tehran are replaced with a secular pro-Western government. If that happens, it will be the greatest foreign policy achievement of the millennia because it will end a lot of the problems Iran has created over the past 47 years. It would end Iran's nuclear weapons program. It would end Iran’s ballistic missile program. It would end Iran's support of terrorism around the world. It would end Iran's deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians (which is itself a war crime). It would reopen the Strait of Hormuz. It would put Iran's oil back on the open market.
But if this war leaves the Islamic government of Iran in power, it will be our biggest foreign policy mistake which, considering our other foreign policy mistakes, would be pretty bad. As for the cost? The cost of a nuclear-armed Iran run by Islamic theocrats would be far higher than any price this war will ultimately be. Unfortunately, the most likely end of this conflict will be that Donald Trump caves to the irrational, short-sighted, political pressure from the Democrats and their allies in the propaganda press and withdraws prematurely, thus leaving Iran an even more dangerous and determined terrorist state than it was before.
Trump's stated deadline for Iran to capitulate to his demands is 8:00pm Eastern Time tonight (3:30am Wednesday in Tehran). What will the President order the military to do tonight? I don't know. But whatever it is, Trump made it more difficult to justify by irresponsibly running his big mouth.