#war

...these systems sit squarely in the center of a recent high-stakes battle between the US government and AI startup Anthropic. Anthropic is seeking to preserve two “red lines”: bans on domestic mass surveillance and on weapons that can identify, track, and kill targets with zero human involvement. Since the start of the year, it’s emerged as the only military AI contractor to place meaningful limits on what experts call one of the final frontiers of AI warfare.

At the center of the debates is DOD Directive 3000.09, one of the only policies governing the use of lethal autonomous weapons. Originally written in 2012, it defines such a system as one that, “once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by an operator.” And it decrees that both fully autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons be designed to allow humans to “exercise appropriate levels” of judgment over the use of force.

The directive set up the “first policy on the use of autonomy in warfare,” said Hamza Chaudhry, who leads AI and national security at the Future of Life Institute.

Depending on how you interpret the definition, however, certain missile defense programs may have crossed that line decades ago. Take the Phalanx CIWS, for instance. It’s an automated weapon system resembling a very large gun, built to defend naval vessels from incoming missile attacks. That type of system wouldn’t work if there were a human in the loop, since it has to respond in milliseconds.

The difference, some experts say, is that these systems operate solely in a defense-only, fixed environment. They’re engaging, this interpretation goes, but not deciding — just reacting to an incoming threat. “The ‘and’ is doing a lot of work inside of that statute — we have systems that can decide and systems that can engage but you can’t have a system that does both,” Reddie said.

They're also "killing" missiles not humans.

Google employees argued their company should take a stand — and it did, choosing not to renew its contract amid the controversy in mid-2018. But Amazon and Microsoft quickly swooped in to pick up tens of millions of dollars in contracts for the same work. Palantir soon took over, and Project Maven became the Maven Smart System (MSS), which not only allows for object detection and tracking but also analyzing surveillance data on a large scale.

The sheer volume of targets could make any meaningful human supervision difficult, said Shoker. “What we know about MSS is that it reduces the number of human beings in the targeting cycle — and that’s actually by design.”

While Anthropic might have been all right reducing human intervention, it’s pushed back against setting it to zero. As Google found with Project Maven, though, competitors are more than willing to fill the gap.

OpenAI quickly signed onto the terms Anthropic had spurned. And in the months after snubbing Anthropic, the Department of Defense signed deals with eight companies to deploy their AI on classified networks: Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, OpenAI, Reflection, Oracle, and SpaceX.

Silicon Valley executives are aggressively pushing back against employee organizing and speaking out, including by using AI to identify leakers. And many tech workers already fear for their jobs in an era when AI is set to replace entry-level roles at their own firms.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has held firm on mass surveillance for Americans, but he’s demonstrated no problem with — and in fact expressed his support for — such surveillance for everyone else.

Anthropic’s “very narrow” red lines “do not go far enough to protect human rights or to comply with international law,” said Tech Justice Law’s Batt. “Anthropic specifically talks about mass domestic surveillance of US persons as posing grave civil liberties concerns, but the same civil liberties concerns apply with equal force to non-US persons,” she added.

In a blog post, he said that “fully autonomous weapons (those that take humans out of the loop entirely and automate selecting and engaging targets) may prove critical for our national defense.” Amodei even said he was happy to “work directly with the Department of War on R&D to improve the reliability of these systems” and speed up the timeline for the company’s help in deploying them.

With no end in sight to the war in Iran and oil prices stuck above $100 a barrel, bond traders worried about inflation have sold off long-term government debt in the U.S. and developed economies in recent days. That has the effect of raising bond yields, including on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note , which rose nearly 24 basis points in the past week to end Friday near 4.6%. 

The 10-year Treasury yield influences the cost of mortgages, auto loans, credit card rates and other consumer debt. When it goes up, consumers feel the pinch. Its rate is set by the market, not the Federal Reserve.

If we’re going to live in a world in which fiscal deficits continue to increase indefinitely, there’s really not any political will to do something about that, and you have, at least in the U.S., a central bank that’s, let’s just say, uniquely hesitant to hike, then it just stands to reason that the yield curve is going to steepen. Long-term yields will continue to increase, because buyers need more compensation against the fiscal risk and the inflation risk that they’re absorbing now.

Savvy investors will understand this is a multi-stage process, and the U.S. government will also get to decide how to react to a sharp and sustained spike in long-end yields.

If this continues, and let’s say Treasury yields [on the 10-year note] march to 5% or above, it won’t be long before the Treasury secretary says, “Listen, I have a toolkit as well, and I’m not afraid to use it.” The Treasury secretary can shorten the weighted average maturity of our debt issuance, make more aggressive use of the buyback tool, and potentially jawbone the market with the Fed and say we may have to engage in purchases of long-end bonds to align them with long-term fundamentals.

In other words, that is financial repression [when the government artificially holds interest rates down, making debt more manageable at the cost of harming savers, among other risks].

I think that’s the end game for the bond market, because 5%-plus bond yields are not sustainable for a variety of reasons.

According to US media reports, Washington sent Iran a 14-point document earlier this week. Under its proposals, Iran would be required to agree not to develop a nuclear weapon and halt all enrichment of uranium for at least 12 years. It would also be required to hand over an estimated 440kg (970lb) stock of uranium, which it has enriched to 60 percent.

In return, the US would gradually lift sanctions and release billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets and withdraw its naval blockade of Iranian ports.

Both sides, which are currently engaged in a naval standoff in the Strait of Hormuz, would reopen the critical waterway within 30 days of signing.

Iran has been subject to crippling US sanctions for decades. The lifting of some of these under a 2015 nuclear agreement drawn up with the former Obama administration, five other countries and the European Union, was reversed when Trump unilaterally walked out of the deal in 2018, during his first term as US president.

Iran is believed to have about 440kg (970lb) of uranium enriched to 60 percent. A 90-percent threshold of enriched uranium is needed to produce a nuclear weapon. Under the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed with several other states, Iran had been permitted to enrich uranium to 3.67 percent – enough to develop a nuclear power programme. Now, the US is demanding that it be reduced to 0 percent.

“From the US positions, it appears that Iran would need to compromise significantly, but they have not demonstrated any appetite to make big concessions, likely because they don’t trust the Trump administration to keep to their commitments,” he added.

The letter – sent on Monday and made public on Thursday – largely focused on Israel’s conduct in Lebanon, where the Israeli military is systematically turning border towns that it has depopulated into rubble.

“The declaration of military evacuation zones has been used to permanently displace people and destroy homes and towns – acts that are in violation of international law,” the legislators wrote.

“Furthermore, no declaration of evacuation zones or ‘kill zones’ absolves Israeli and US forces from the absolute legal responsibility to determine that each individual person or civilian facility targeted by drones, jets, and gunfire is, in fact, a military target.”

Signatories to the letter include prominent progressives such as Peter Welch, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Chris Van Hollen.

Chris Coons, a centrist and staunch Israel supporter, also signed.

Throughout its genocidal war on Gaza, Israel used displacement orders to depopulate large areas of the territory, and then blew up nearly every structure in the evacuated area.

Israeli officials have publicly admitted that they aim to re-create the same model in South Lebanon, creating a desolate, uninhabitable no-man’s land that would serve as a buffer zone that would not require permanent military occupation.

In a letter obtained by The Washington Post, 29 lawmakers led by Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to provide details on Israel’s capabilities – and how the administration is preparing for the risk of nuclear escalation.

The request challenges a long-standing U.S. policy of avoiding public acknowledgment of Israel’s nuclear arsenal.  Lawmakers argue that silence creates a double standard, undercutting U.S. credibility when confronting nuclear ambitions in countries like  Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The push also reflects broader Democratic frustration with Israel’s conflicts across Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and now Iran, deepening divisions inside the party.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, independent estimates suggest Israel holds roughly 90 plutonium-based nuclear warheads. The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation says the country has developed enough material to build between 100 and 200 weapons.

Oil demand is expected to contract by 80 kb/d this year, as the Iran war upends our global outlook. This is 730 kb/d less than in last month’s Report and a forecast 1.5 mb/d 2Q26 decline would be the sharpest since Covid-19 slashed fuel consumption. Initially, the deepest cuts in oil use have come in the Middle East and Asia Pacific, mainly for naphtha, LPG and jet fuel. However, demand destruction will spread as scarcity and higher prices persist.

Global oil supply plummeted by 10.1 mb/d to 97 mb/d in March, with continued attacks on energy infrastructure in the Middle East and ongoing restrictions to tanker movements through the Strait of Hormuz leading to the largest disruption in history. OPEC+ production fell 9.4 mb/d m-o-m to 42.4 mb/d while non-OPEC+ supply declined 770 kb/d m-o-m to 54.7 mb/d, as lower Qatari output offset gains in Brazil and the United States.

Global observed oil inventories fell by 85 mb in March, with stocks outside of the Middle East Gulf drawn down by a significant 205 mb (-6.6 mb/d) as flows through the Strait of Hormuz were choked off. At the same time, with limited outlets after the effective closure of the Strait, floating storage of crude and oil products in the Middle East rose by 100 mb and onshore crude stocks in the region were up by 20 mb. China added 40 mb of crude to tanks.

However, at the time of writing, it remains unclear whether the ceasefire will turn into a lasting peace and a return to regular shipping flows through the Strait of Hormuz. With oil-importing nations scrambling to source replacement barrels from an increasingly shrinking pool of supply, physical crude oil prices surged to record levels near $150/bbl, far above the prices in futures markets, with the physical-futures disconnect becoming increasingly acute. Even steeper gains have been seen for refined products, with middle distillate prices in Singapore reaching all-time highs above $290/bbl.

Resuming flows through the Strait of Hormuz remains the single most important variable in easing the pressure on energy supplies, prices and the global economy.

In early April, shipments through the Strait remained severely restricted, with loadings of crude, natural gas liquids and refined products averaging around 3.8 mb/d, compared with more than 20 mb/d in February ahead of the crisis. Exports through alternative routes – most notably from the west coast of Saudi Arabia and Fujairah on the east coast of the UAE, as well as the ITP pipeline that runs from Iraq to Ceyhan in Türkiye – had increased to 7.2 mb/d from less than 4 mb/d before the war. The overall loss in oil exports exceeds 13 mb/d, with associated production curtailment and damage to energy infrastructure in the region resulting in cumulative supply losses of more than 360 mb in March and 440 mb projected for April.

Overall, global oil demand is estimated to contract by 800 kb/d year-on-year in March and by 2.3 mb/d in April. Global oil demand is now projected to decline by 80 kb/d on average in 2026, compared to growth of 730 kb/d expected in last month’s Report.

With both Hezbollah and Iran damaged but still standing, Trump’s announcement of twin ceasefires in Iran and Lebanon has exposed the principal cheerleader of both conflicts, Netanyahu, to domestic political jeopardy.

Just days before Trump’s Lebanon ceasefire announcement, a poll by the Israel Democracy Institute showed overwhelming support among Jewish Israeli respondents for continuing the conflict even if that led to friction with the US.

The ceasefire with Iran has also proven unpopular within Israel, with two-thirds of Israelis polled by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem opposing the pause in operations.

“I think that, on the one hand, Israelis, Israeli Jews in particular, tend to put both of them [Iran and Lebanon] into the broader basket of ‘all enemies are against us,’” Dahlia Scheindlin, an American Israeli political consultant, pollster, and journalist told Al Jazeera, “We live in a region with a sea of enemies trying to destroy Israel in every possible way. So it becomes part of a wider self-image that Israelis have.”

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered his military to "vigorously attack Hezbollah targets" in Lebanon, two days after a ceasefire was extended by three weeks.

Israel continues to occupy a much of southern Lebanon and has been carrying out large-scale demolitions there.

An Israeli strike killed Amal Khalil, who worked for a Lebanese newspaper, and injured freelance photographer Zeinab Faraj. Officials in Lebanon say they were deliberately targeted as they sought shelter in a home after an initial air strike hit the vehicle in front of them, killing two men.

Israel has granted a perpetrator of war crimes in Gaza the honor of lighting a ceremonial torch on Independence Day. By choosing Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv to represent “the spirit of the nation,” Israel is making genocide part of its official national ethos.

“There’s nothing for them to go back to in Rafah and Jabalya… Tens of thousands of families have no documents, childhood photos, ID cards, homes. Nothing.” This boast was made by Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, an Israeli Rabbi who perpetrated war crimes who has been chosen to light a torch at Israel’s Independence Day ceremony, today, April 21. This is one of the highest accolades in the country, granted to “exemplary citizens” who represent “the spirit of the nation.”

Rabbi Zarbiv served about 500 days as a military reservist in Gaza over the last two and a half years. As a bulldozer operator during the genocide, he carried out war crimes of which he has openly boasted in videos he filmed, media interviews and public talks.

Bestowing one of the highest civilian honors in Israel on a citizen who committed war crimes illustrates how deeply the dehumanization of Palestinians has taken root in the Israeli mainstream. It is yet another terrifying signal that genocide has officially become part of the national ethos. Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv is a regional rabbinical court judge for the settlement of Ariel, and head the pre-military academy in the settlement of Beit El that educates hundreds of Israeli youth. Choosing him as an “exemplary citizen” represents a state-level endorsement of the complete de-humanization of Palestinians, systematic destruction of Palestinian life and the governing logic of annihilation and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Zarbiv is not ashamed of his actions, neither, clearly is the State of Israel. We’vecompiled some documentation here to mark the occasion.

An extremist rabbi known for razing civilian homes in Gaza will light a torch at Israel’s independence day celebration on Tuesday, a role human rights campaigners said marked the embrace of genocide as the official “spirit of the nation”.

The footage spread so widely on social media that his name entered the lexicon of Hebrew slang. “To Zarbiv” now means to destroy, a neologism that the 54-year-old has embraced, making it the title of a lecture earlier this year.

Zarbiv’s selection for the ceremony marks an official endorsement of the dehumanisation of Palestinians and systematic destruction of Palestinian life, according to the rights group B’tselem. It said: “This selection sends a clear message to the citizens of Israel and the entire world – in Israel, genocide, ethnic cleansing and war crimes are the ‘spirit of the nation’.”

Israel's levelling of these structures comes after Defence Minister Israel Katz's order on 22 March to "accelerate the destruction of Lebanese homes" near the Israeli border based on the "model in Gaza" as part of its campaign against Hezbollah.

The systematic demolition of these towns and villages may amount to a war crime, international law experts told BBC Verify.

Katz's plan for an Israeli-controlled "security zone" extending from the border to the Litani river would take up about 10% of Lebanon's territory.

Using verified footage and analysis of available satellite imagery, BBC Verify found evidence of controlled Israeli demolitions in at least seven border towns and villages.

We found more than 460 buildings had been demolished in Aita al-Shaab alone. Excavators and armoured vehicles can also be seen in satellite imagery of the village, according to Tony Reeves, founder of intelligence analysis firm MAIAR.

The deliberate demolition of structures is not a new Israeli military tactic. It has been deployed across swathes of Gaza during the war that was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

Multiple legal experts told BBC Verify the destruction of property is strictly prohibited by international humanitarian law, unless it is demanded by military necessity. The bar for necessity is higher than military convenience or advantage, according to Prof Janina Dill, a global security and international law expert at Oxford University: "It certainly does not cover levelling entire villages as a predicate to long-term national security." It also requires case-by-case analysis when determining which buildings have military significance, said Yuval Shany, a legal expert from the Israel Democracy Institute think tank. The capacity of some civilian buildings to be used for military activity "does not justify a sweeping policy of creating buffer zones next to the border inside which all buildings are to be destroyed", he added.

Dr Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne, co-director of the Centre for International Law at the University of Bristol, reiterated that the "fundamental rule of law" is that civilian objects must not be targeted. "It is not a permissible defence to claim that the total destruction of towns and villages in southern Lebanon is necessary for creating a buffer zone to hold back Hezbollah," he said. "Even if Israel's war in Lebanon can be considered self-defence against attacks from Hezbollah, its conduct seems to go far beyond a limited war of self-defence against specific attacks."

Trump also claimed to have rejected an offer from Iran to reopen the strait three days ago, saying that "it will open when we make a deal".

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian placed the blame on Trump for upending talks — saying the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, the president’s threats of violence against the country and his “breach of commitments” made negotiations untenable.  “World sees your endless hypocritical rhetoric and contradiction between claims and actions,” Pezeshkian wrote on the social platform X.

Vatanka pointed out that the nuclear deal negotiated under the Obama administration took well more than a year to be ironed out. “It’s going to take many months this time, too, but you need to have the ceasefire in place,” he said. “You need to have the Strait of Hormuz open, you need to build trust.” Morgan Viña, who served at the United Nations in Trump’s first term, said the Iranians have a greater ability to withstand pressure than Trump, given his promises to avoid forever wars and his party facing the midterm elections amid high gas prices.  “It is to their advantage to make this as long and as painful,” she said on the “Fault Lines” podcast on Wednesday. “But President Trump being too willing, too eager, to find an agreement here, I think that is to our detriment when it comes to finding a long-term solution.”

And Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the administration was pressured into issuing another 30-day sanctions waiver to allow Russian oil on the market at the request of “more than 10 of the most vulnerable and poorest countries in terms of energy,” during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing.  Bessent was criticized by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) for padding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s pocket with another $4.5 billion to fund his war in Ukraine.

Israel is not a normal democracy that abides by the rule of law or legal restraint. It is very much an expansionist state with bold ambitions and a demonstrated willingness to break international law. The events of the past two years have made this reality impossible to ignore.

The “Greater Israel” project, a term that has carried two primary meanings over the decades, has moved from the ideological fringe into the governing coalition of Israeli politics. In its narrower, post-1967 usage, “Greater Israel” referred to Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights. In its maximalist, biblicist form, drawn from Genesis 15:18, it invokes the territory stretching “from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates,” a vast area encompassing parts of modern Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and potentially reaching into Iraq.

Once confined to religious nationalists and settler ideologues, this expansionist vision now sits at the cabinet table. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for Israel to “expand to Damascus,” displayed a map showing Jordan as part of Israel at a 2023 speech in Paris

Netanyahu’s coalition agreement explicitly declares that “Jewish people have an exclusive and indisputable right to all parts of the Land of Israel” and that “the government will promote and develop settlements in all parts of the Land of Israel.”

Perhaps most striking is that this rhetoric is no longer confined to the religious right. Opposition leader Yair Lapid, an ostensibly secular figure, stated in February 2026 that he supports “anything that will allow the Jews a large, broad, strong land,” adding that “the borders are the borders of the Bible.” When even centrist politicians invoke biblical mandates to justify territorial expansion, the ideological transformation becomes undeniable.

Smotrich has repeatedly asserted that the military campaign in Lebanon must result in a “change of Israel’s borders.” On March 23, 2026, he told an Israeli radio program that the campaign “needs to end with a different reality entirely, both with the Hezbollah decision but also with the change of Israel’s borders.” He then declared at a Knesset faction meeting that “the Litani must be our new border with the state of Lebanon, just like the Yellow Line in Gaza and like the buffer zone and peak of the Hermon in Syria,” adding, “I say here definitively, in every room and in every discussion, too.”

Defense Minister Israel Katz has adopted a complementary posture. He announced at the end of March that the IDF will maintain “security control over the entire area up to the Litani River” and that “hundreds of thousands of residents of southern Lebanon who evacuated northward will not return south of the Litani River until security for the residents of the north is ensured.”

Similar to IDF's current Gaza model, the defense establishment intends to destroy villages near the Israel-Lebanon border, and establish permanent military outposts in the area between the border and the Litani River

The defense establishment's perception is that all of these villages are used by Hezbollah for activities against Israel, and therefore they must be completely destroyed to prevent Hezbollah operatives from returning to the area.

Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday that all houses in Lebanese villages near the Israeli border will be demolished "like in Rafah and Beit Hanoun," referring to areas in the Gaza Strip where the IDF carried out widespread demolitions of homes during the war.

more than 600,000 Lebanese residents who have been evacuated will not be allowed to return to south Lebanon "until the security and safety of northern residents are guaranteed." The defense minister said that following the IDF's operation in Lebanon, Israeli troops will continue to be stationed in a "security zone" inside Lebanese territory to defend against anti-tank missiles and to maintain security control of the area south of the Litani River.

Italian ‌Prime Minister Giorgia ‌Meloni said on Tuesday that her government has halted the automatic renewal of a military Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Israel, as Italy has become increasingly critical of Israel’s wars and killing of civilians.

According to Haaretz, the MoU includes the exchange of military equipment and cooperation on military research, though an Italian source told the Israeli newspaper that Meloni’s announcement reflected a policy already in place.

The source said that Italy halted military cooperation with Israel shortly after October 7, 2023, though according to reports from last year, Italy suspended weapons exports to Israel but was still fulfilling previous arms deals. Meloni has been under significant pressure from her opposition and from Italian citizens to cut ties with Israel. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani visited Lebanon on Monday, where he slammed Israel’s “unacceptable attacks by Israel against the civilian population” and said it called for the avoidance of “another escalation like the one in Gaza.” When asked if Italy would take a similar step toward the US, the source speaking to Haaretz said that Italy was still assessing the impact on Iranian civilians in the US bombing campaign in Iran, which started with the bombing of an elementary school, which slaughtered more than 100 children.

The US wants a clear and enforceable commitment that Iran will not develop nuclear weapons – or even the capability to do so quickly.

Washington and Tehran signed a nuclear deal in 2015 under US President Barack Obama. The agreement put a limit on Iran’s uranium enrichment of 3.67 percent in return for sanctions relief. But Trump, who succeeded Obama, withdrew Washington from the deal three years later and slapped sanctions back on Iran. Since then, Iran has accelerated its uranium enrichment to 60 percent. To make an atomic bomb, 90 percent enrichment is required.

During Israel’s 12-day war on Iran in June, the US carried out air strikes on Iran’s three main nuclear sites, after which Trump claimed that Iran’s nuclear programme had been obliterated. But eight months later, he started a war against Iran by saying one of his main goals was to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The war was launched while talks mediated by Oman were under way between Iran and the US. Oman had said a short time before the attacks began that a deal was “within reach”.

Iran is pushing for a broader regional ceasefire, including an end to fighting involving its allies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed support for Washington’s decision to suspend the strikes on Iran, he said the ceasefire will not extend to Israel’s ongoing military operations in Lebanon.

Hours into the ceasefire, which began on Wednesday, Israel carried out dozens of attacks across Lebanon, killing more than 300 people in one day.

However, Tehran insisted the ceasefire included Lebanon, citing Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s ceasefire announcement on X, which unequivocally stated this was the case.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” posted President Donald Trump on Easter Sunday. In case one thought that was an impulsive utterance, it’s notable that the president in apparently prepared remarks a few days earlier said, “If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously.”

Such rhetorical statements – if followed through – would amount to the most serious war crimes – and thus the president’s statements place servicemembers in a profoundly challenging situation.

Iranian power plants and other critical civilian infrastructure are protected from attacks by the law of war the United States helped craft after World War II. Such an object can lose its protection only if it is used for military purposes by the enemy and its destruction “offers a definite military advantage.” Even then, such an object can be attacked only if, after a case-by-case rigorous analysis, the “concrete and direct military advantage anticipated” outweighs the civilian suffering that is expected to result. (Geneva Convention Additional Protocol I art. 52, art. 57; DOD Law of War Manual, § 5.6, § 5.12).

Despite those well-settled legal parameters, President Trump has repeatedly threatened to obliterate such infrastructure without regard to the law’s high demands. His comments are blatant expressions that he is willing to turn the United States into a rogue State like Iran and Russia, one that rejects the fundamental legal restraints that protect innocent non-combatants like children, and the Iranian civilian population itself.

U.S. military commanders have sworn to obey the Constitution and only those orders from their superiors that are lawful.  Threats to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” and to show “no quarter, no mercy” are plainly illegal.  Trump’s outrageous statements gravely threaten our military professionals’ bedrock moral and legal principles, ones enshrined in the law of war that they’ve been trained to follow their entire careers.

the DOD Law of War Manual’s note on targeting civilian infrastructure states: “Diminishing the morale of the civilian population and their support for the war effort does not provide a definite military advantage. However, attacks that are otherwise lawful are not rendered unlawful if they happen to result in diminished civilian morale.”  DOD Law of War Manual, § 5.6.  Such “morale bombing” has been rejected for many decades; it had gained support during World War II only to be roundly rejected by Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions and customary international law.  The idea of using civilian pain in order to effectuate political goals would rightly stoke criticisms that the United States’s use of military force against civilian targets equates to acts of sheer terrorism. (See Additional Protocol I art. 51(2) (“Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.”) (emphasis added); DOD Law of War Manual, § 5.2.2 (“Measures of intimidation or terrorism against the civilian population are prohibited, including acts or threats of violence, the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population.”) (emphasis added).