Illegal War, Illegal Methods

When Trump boasts about destroying bridges, threatens to wipe out power systems, and talks about sending an entire country “back to the Stone Age”, most people don’t need an international law degree to know something’s wrong. Their instincts are sound. International law exists precisely to restrain this kind of conduct: wars launched without lawful justification, and methods of warfare that treat civilian suffering as a tool of strategy.

That’s why Trump and Netanyahu’s war against Iran is illegal in two ways. First, it was launched unlawfully. Second, some of the methods being threatened and used in it are unlawful. This isn’t legal hair-splitting. It goes to the heart of whether international law means anything when the most powerful states decide to ignore it.

Start with the war itself. The UN Charter prohibits the threat or use of force against another state except in very narrow circumstances, principally where the Security Council authorises it or where a state is acting in self-defence after an armed attack. Article 2(4) sets out the general prohibition, and Article 51 preserves the right of self-defence only if an armed attack occurs. A letter published 100 US-based international law experts points out how the strikes on Iran violated that framework: there was no Security Council authorisation, and no adequate basis for claiming lawful self-defence against an actual or imminent Iranian attack.

That matters because too much commentary and too many people - including Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong - skip over this threshold issue. Before asking whether a particular bridge, tunnel, or facility is a lawful target, we should also be asking the more basic question: what was the legal basis for starting this war? On the public evidence, this war is not based on lawful self-defence. It’s exactly the kind of conduct the post-WWII legal order was supposed to prevent.

Then there’s the second layer: illegal methods. Even during war, international law doesn’t permit anything goes. The rules of international humanitarian law require parties to distinguish between civilians and military objectives. Attacks can only be directed at military objectives. A bridge, power plant, water facility, school, hospital, or home is a civilian object unless it is being used in a way that makes it a genuine military target. Things like water and electricity, that are indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, receive special protection.

So when Trump boasts about destroying a bridge and openly threatens to wipe out power infrastructure, alarm bells should ring. Legal experts have warned that such strikes on Iran amount to war crimes. The reason is straightforward: deliberately attacking civilian infrastructure is unlawful unless it is a legitimate military objective, and even then the attacking force must comply with proportionality and take feasible precautions to minimise civilian harm. Macho rhetoric doesn’t override any of that.

Of course, not every attack on infrastructure is automatically a war crime. A bridge used to move weapons or troops may become a military objective. But that doesn’t end the analysis. The burden is still on the attacking state to show that the target genuinely contributed to military action, that the expected civilian harm was not excessive in relation to the military advantage, and that feasible precautions were taken. That’s why threats to flatten civilian systems are so wrong: they suggest a mindset in which civilian suffering is part of the pressure campaign.

And rhetoric matters. When Trump boasts about destroying electricity, water, and other life-sustaining systems, he is not merely sounding brutal. He is revealing US intent, recklessness, and contempt for the legal restraints meant to protect civilians. That doesn’t by itself prove a war crime, but it is exactly the kind of evidence investigators and historians later examine.

So what’s the plain-English version is this? Well, if the war was launched without lawful justification, it is an illegal war. And if civilian infrastructure is being threatened or attacked unlawfully, those are illegal methods. International law isn’t supposed to be something Trump and Netanyahu invoke when it suits them and discard when it doesn’t. It applies to the powerful as well as the weak. On the evidence now in public view, Trump and Netanyahu are failing that test. And Australia is “supporting them”.

Noor #SchoolGirlUnderBombs at the Iranian school where 168 people were killed by US bombing.