When war crimes rhetoric becomes battlefield reality | Hacker News Reader

When war crimes rhetoric becomes battlefield reality

justsecurity.org

47 pointsdogscatstrees63 comments

Iranian here, full internet blackout done here by the the Islamic state, connected through alot of efforts to read news and I came upon this.

By our ideas, hitting power plants and such infra will not effect IRGC by any means, IRGC hates it's own people ( aka Iranians who uprised against them so many times, last being less than 2 months ago leading to 40k+ civilian deaths), it'll just make the economy many times worse for us than it is. IRGC will run it's infra even if it means full blackout of the civilians.

At this point of time I'm getting ready to be laid off cuz our jobs are non existent now ( I am a fellow software engineer)

For next couple of months, life's gonna be shit, either the strikes will end it, or the IRGC. Wonder what we gotta do.

It's not the first time the USA has committed war crimes in its 222 to 230+ years of war, and it won't be the last either.

I keep wondering what Iran planned to do with its 440kg of U-235 enriched to 60% when most nuclear reactors need only 5% and some needing only up to 20%.

https://armscontrolcenter.org/irans-stockpile-of-highly-enri...

https://armscontrolcenter.org/uranium-enrichment-for-peace-o...

If they were smart, build a defensive nuclear arsenal. It certainly seems to have worked for North Korea.

A functional nuclear weapon would definitely have prevented the current war. Hard to blame them for trying.

Circular reasoning. The current war is only because Iran was building a “functional nuclear weapon”.

You can definitely guess what are they gonna do with it now since the inept US attack obliterated every incentive there was to not do that.

I don't care about hypotheticals, there is already a hyper violent belligerent country in the middle east with a few hundred "illegal" nukes. Their officials/thinkers have already stated insane things about using the nukes on eg innocent European capitals without anyone doing counter clarification or pushback. I'd worry much more about the nukes and fissile materials there.

What I find tricky to reason about here is that whether destroying infrastructure comes down to "whether the military advantage outweighs the impact to civilians", and as far as I can tell, there's no robust way to assess this.

Indeed, this seems to be what supporters of Trump are leaning on, as you can make the argument that _any_ bridge, or _any_ powerplant could hypothetically be used by the military, and that this conflict is sufficiently important for the livelihood of people in America/"The West" that doing anything that even slightly helps tips the odds is justifiable.

exactly, they can argue forever that their point of view was justified.

Interesting requirement. Where does that leave a lot of other wars? Russia has been attacking Ukrainian infrastructure for a while. Ukraine has been attacking Russian oil production and ports, especially recently. I seem to recall a lot of infrastructure destroyed in the US invasion of Iraq. There have been a lot of wars since WW2 and I find it had to believe that those than involved bombing were all restricted to military targets.

A lot of war is about economics and logistics.

Edit: to add, what about Iran's threats to destroy water supplies?

The problem is also that the world has made it very clear that it doesn't believe in warcrimes. Warcrimes are what's defined as illegal in the convention of Geneve.

The purpose, the idea behind warcrimes is that when warcrimes occur, the world would unite, in the security council, a mandate would be voted in, and the whole world would intervene, preventing warcrimes from occuring, or at least from repeating.

Well, when it comes to Iranian and US warcrimes the UNSC, specifically France, Russia and China have declared there will be no consequence to any warcrime by either side. In France's case it's not that they don't think warcrimes are terrible crimes, it's that they don't want to help anyone.

In Russia and China's case it's that they think this war destabilizes the west and that matters more to them than terrible crimes. Oh and the whole communist stick of "it's not warcrimes, it's internal matters", you know, when they do it to their population. So they have declared they will actively fight to prevent anything being done about warcrimes.

Under those circumstances, of course, warcrimes effectively don't exist, and that's that. Or to put it another way: the world is perfectly happy for you to be discussing the finer points of international law and why this and that is or isn't "a crime".

But the world is totally unwilling to do anything about warcrimes. I mean, let's be realistic. The world is unwilling to do anything about Iranian warcrimes, and perfectly certain the US won't commit any (the US will make mistakes, of course, but not actually commit real warcrimes). Whatever the outcome of your discussion on what is and isn't a heinous crime ... there will be no consequences.

One thing to consider is that Trump is publicly stating that the US are destroying the infrastructure as a punishment for non-compliance. That basically makes it clear that the motive is not based on military considerations.

Yeah I did wonder myself if that tweet was an admission of guilt.

If I were a lawyer responsible for defending Trump in the Hague, I'd argue that the tweet was actually an abbreviated way of saying "If Iran does not comply, we will destroy all military assets, including but not limited to their ICBMs, Bridges, and Power Stations, such that we have total military dominance."

Now very obviously (to me at least) this was not the intent of the message, but I don't know whether you could prove that in a hypothetical war crimes trial.

It's basically what russia is trying to do for years in Ukraine. Beating populatuon into submission. Which is even dumber in case of Iran since it's not a democratic country where population has much of a say.

Hypothetically civilians can be used by the military and provide some military advantage as future soldiers or weapons manufacturers or even army rations providers. So let's bomb them too, right?

> “…tips the odds is justifiable.”

The slippery slope.

Hell, farms and water sources could be used by the military to sustain soldiers. Women of childbearing age could produce future soldiers. This line of reasoning has no floor.

There’s a reason that past generations tried to draw a line in the sand and say “we will not cross this line.” It was imperfect and often violated, but at least it served to frame actions as just or unjust. Blatant violations could catalyze domestic opposition to unjust war, as in Vietnam and Iraq. Now that the standard has been eroded into nothing, I don’t know if we can stop further escalation.

Loophole finding. Again.

dont worry as soon as trump is gone americas sycophant allies will be clamouring to get back to some sort of pre-trump status quo, but i doubt we're ever going back to 100% pre-trump prices.

whoops, was responding to someone but accidentally top levelled this comment, which id rather leave here even though it lacks context -- something about levies on ship transit, which isnt really that much different to global tariffs is it?

What’s the plan for opening transit through the strait? Let Iran hold it hostage and ransom tankers through? That seems absolutely unacceptable.

How about each country sets up a blockade and demands their toll for safe passage?

The only sensible strategy is to make IRGC capitulate.

How about listening to their demands? This was triggered by the US and Israel, it's on them to fix this mess.

Extorting an international waterway is effectively just piracy (we just don't typically use the word for state actors). We could try to end this piracy through negotiations, but letting states use piracy as a bargaining chip doesn't set a good precedent.

> letting states use piracy as a bargaining chip doesn't set a good precedent.

If piracy is bad, what precedent due the US and Israel's conduct set?

Instead of tolling the strait, Iran should arrest leaders of their neighboring states, and try them for their crimes under Iranian law.

There’s no point in arguing tit for tat or who has the moral high ground. No matter what grievance one side brings up the other will have a retort.

You forget that USA has instituted a blockade of Cuba in February, before attacking Iran.

USA has intercepted the oil tankers headed to Cuba, causing a very serious fuel shortage there, which has created a lot of problems for the ordinary Cuban citizens.

It is USA who started practicing piracy in international waters and blocking the traffic of ships belonging to others.

Therefore now it is really shameless for USA to criticize Iran for doing against USA and its allies, during a war started by USA, the same thing that USA has already been doing, and unlike Iran, USA has started doing this completely unprovoked.

USA has already demonstrated in numerous occasions that they believe to have the right to break any international laws and treaties whenever they please. Therefore any other country also has the same right, whenever that is done against USA or its allies.

US physically confirmed Iran's ownership of the strait. Now everybody should just get off their lawn. US spits on international laws and institutions so why should anybody respect them?

If we're saying that because everyone has broken a few international laws, now they don't matter at all, then why should Iran be the only one extorting international waters or waterways?

Should we start our own extortion program? There's no need to limit it to waters near us; we can credibly threaten ships anywhere on the planet. Of course other states could do the same, even landlocked ones...

> Should we start our own extortion program?

Isn't US already doing that with Venezuela and/or Cuba?

Invading a country unprovoked, launching missiles at schoolgirls is invasion, murder and warcrimes. We don't typically use the word murder for state actors, but letting them use this as a bargaining chip doesn't set a good precedent.

You keep saying unprovoked. How is attacking Israel with tens of thousands of rockets and drones (mostly by proxy) not a provocation? How many attacks do you expect Israel to tolerate before finally responding?

Proxy is a nice word that's best not brought up or else south America and the middle east deserve to nuke the United states multiple times over.

Article 51 applies to states, not continents, but sure some states might have a claim against the US. That doesn’t change anything about the Iran regime’s aggression.

But you brought it up. Nicaragua if we are following the laws of proportionality established by America and Israel in this invasion, Nicaragua alone has the right to level most of the unuted states, and to say nothing of the claims of other south american and middle eastern countries. So personally I'd rather not use the proxy argument unless one is comfortable with the idea of the USA having multiple nukes lobbed at it from all over the world.

Iran presently also isn't trying to Lebensraum "buffer zones" from other countries lands around itself.

Okay, let's imagine that Nicaragua has the right to nuke the US, setting aside the fact that their self-defense justification expired decades ago, and that someone else committing war crimes does not create any legal justification for other war crimes.

I'm still not sure what this has to do with Iranian aggression?

Israel and America are the ones who directly invaded Iran during "negotiations". If you want to get at proxies, then again as I said, I would support arming Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, etc with nukes and having them launch them at the USA. If not, then Israel and USA attacked first, Iran hasn't been directly attacking them during this time.

> Israel and USA attacked first

Only if we ignore all of Iran's proxy warfare.

If we correct your argument so it's actually based on international law, it seems to boil down to "we have to ignore proxy warfare, otherwise Nicaragua might have historically (several decades ago) had a right to attack US military assets." That hardly seems like a reason to deny reality and ignore proxy warfare.

And the way to make the broader million strong Iranian military fanatical religious death cult capitulate is....

The civilian price will be terrible. But this could be one way: Destroy all power plants and desalination plants. Rations will be given out by “peace keepers” on the condition that IRGC members surrender and are taken prisoner. Missiles and drones can be exchanged for rations as well.

Iran depends on desalination for around 3% of its drinking water, and has said that any such attacks on its infrastructure will see the same to any country that has support the USA/Israel military actions.

USA allies in the region will be largely uninhabitable, since they depend on power and desalination for their existence.

Still, maybe that is what Trump, the crazy bastard, wants.

Yeah, the amount of magical thinking about this conflict in the USA is disturbing. Iran is dry, but it's not just desert. The military will have backup generators and priority access to any generator infrastructure or repair capability. The ones that will suffer are the civilians, and the fanatics will just see that as martyrdom.

You can't defeat religious fanatics that welcome pain just by inflicting pain, especially by inflicting it mainly on other people.

Martyrdom is more like they are prepared to die for the cause, as long as they are remembered for their sacrifice, which is not fundamentally differen US or the religious fanatics that are Israeli troops

They don't welcome pain any more than Buddha did when he sacrificed himself so the tigress could feed and raise her cubs.

Ah yes the true and tried strategy of civilian bombing, worked so well for: the nazis bombing campaign against the UK.

Same goes with Russia against Ukraine.

It worked in Japan.

Could work in cooling the belligerence of Israel too, especially if we can manage to decommission all their nukes in the strike. Don't look at me, you're the one who brought up nuking.

With precision guided munition and air superiority there is no need for indiscriminate nuclear bombs.

But Japan does go to show that: 1. Leadership change is not voluntary, even when faced with obvious military dominance.

2. requires horrific destruction

3. Can be good for the long term of the country.

Let’s not forget IRGC has a long list of atrocities and oppression to their name. Yes… yes… you might say the same of USA, but it is categorically different.

It isn't different. Much of Iran's conflicts can at least be seen as reactive. The USA and Israel love invading countries unprovoked and on naked lies. Their kill count in illegal and immoral wars far exceeds anyone else. If we want to go that route, just don't, because by that token the entirety of South America must nuke the USA several hundred times.

Israel in any case isn't much better. Random Mileikowskis and Androvich's claiming ancient levantine connections and killing and stealing land over this nonsense.

Hitting desalination plant will mostly (and almost only) hurt the population outside of IRGC power circle, exactly the population the USA incited to rebel for a few years, with pakistani help. Basically South Alborz. Iran did have a water crisis, but it was agricultural water that made them have to import more food, not an issue of drinking water. The only way to truly start a global Iranian famine (what a terrible weapon tbh, i can't help but to think less of people who think about using it, it's impossible for me to stay neutral,it is an inhumane stance, and i would be ashamed of having it) is to block Iran northern trading routes to Russia/Kazakhstan/Azerbaijan, which, to be clear, is impossible.

re: Blocking the trading routes

Couldn’t you significantly degrade transportation via air campaign?

The problem, I think, is that these radical governments will refuse to abdicate even in the face of complete destruction. Look at what happened to Gaza.

Maybe, but you would have to hit them from Turkey, it is the limit of the f35 range from anywhere else. And bombing ships with b52 is expensive and dumb.

> The problem, I think, is that these radical governments will refuse to abdicate even in the face of complete destruction

Last time a government did this for a few years, we did get the 'keep calm and carry on' posters, so...

https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/kheft0...

Assuming that USA would succeed to do such a destruction, their "peace keepers" would never have enough rations to feed so many people as they are in Iran.

The only way for USA to succeed would be to attempt to kill most of the Iranians, which would only make even more clear that USA are not the "good guys" and they have lost long ago the moral authority to demand anything from others in international relationships.

This. The damage to the agricultural supply chain is already done. Fuel & fertilizer isn't staged where it needs to be for planting, which means the entire capacity to generate harvest is now offset & going to be prohibitively expensive, resulting in domestic food insecurity, which will make offering rations (read weaponized famine), politically untenable. As far as I'm concerned, the man just added war criminal to his list of accomplishments. Smfh.

Iran doesnt have the defensive capabilities needed tomproperly defend their airspace, so their plan was to make it hurt if they were attacked.

The fact that the US seemed surprised they shut down the strait is such an immense intelligence failure.

If anyone by this point think there will be any meaningful change in Iranian society that won't be shoved down their throats imperialist style, they shouldn't be in politics or military intelligence. They should be selling pencils from a cup.

Whatever aims the US had with this illegal war, we should all admit they are a lost cause.

Unless the US allows for immense civilian suffering, I think Iran will outlast any US political patience for this war

> immense intelligence failure

There's a singular failure point. Trump was properly informed and just said "nah, they are gonna collapse before they do it".

it is almost certain that Trump never even saw the intelligence.

it is also almost certain that Bannon or Stephen Miller or whoever his Trump's Russian handler -- wildly thought to be Melania until he got elected -- is also telling him what to think.

given that it is reported he literally has off the record calls with Putin, it is entirely possible that his handler is literally Putin himself at this point

That would require presence of conspiracy (which I don't doubt) with coordination and consistency (which I totally doubt).

While my explanation requires just one idiot who likes to disregard input. Which is self-evidently true.

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