\u201cThere seems to be little doubt that spreading terror among Iranian civilians is the primary purpose of Trump\u2019s threat,\u201d Heller noted. \u201cThat said, Trump\u2019s threat is unlikely to qualify as a war crime,\u201d he added, noting that international tribunals have typically required such threats to result in \u201cgrave consequences\u201d for civilians \u2014 and \u201cthat has obviously not happened yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Others suggest such rhetoric may be unlawful under international law without necessarily meeting the threshold for a war crime.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese threats violate the prohibition against giving no quarter,\u201d said Gerry Simpson, professor of public international law at the London School of Economics, referring to a rule in the laws of war, codified in Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, that forbids declaring that no enemy fighters will be spared or that surrender will not be accepted.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is obviously cruel and dangerous \u2014 and possibly deranged,\u201d Simpson told POLITICO. \u201cBut it also constitutes an act under international law and one with legal effect.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the heart of the debate is a distinction that international law draws, sometimes awkwardly, between what is unlawful and what is criminal.<\/p>\n
International law clearly prohibits threats of force, including under the U.N. Charter\u2019s<\/a> ban on \u201cthe threat or use of force\u201d against other states. But turning such threats into war crimes typically requires a higher bar, with international tribunals focusing on conduct that produces concrete effects, as reflected in case law from tribunals such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia\u2019s Prosecutor v. Dragomir Milo\u0161evi\u0107<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThere seems to be little doubt that spreading terror among Iranian civilians is the primary purpose of Trump\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[22974,2961,38,34,5633,689,3040,22975,1048,1023,51,36,226,22976],"class_list":["post-59873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-court-decisions","tag-courts","tag-donald-trump","tag-iran","tag-judiciary","tag-media","tag-rights","tag-sierra-leone","tag-social-media","tag-sport","tag-united-states","tag-war","tag-war-in-iran","tag-yugoslavia"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116376376675038870","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}