An entire civilization could have died tonight — and Trump wouldn’t be held accountable

“It probably will.” Trump backed off the threat, but, in any case, holding him responsible for an attack like the one he threatened to launch on Iran would be practically impossible without the US Supreme Court, says analyst.

“An entire civilization will die tonight, never to be resurrected. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” It was exactly with these words that Donald Trump caused global panic this Tuesday, in what is being described as o most dramatic ultimatum of his presidency.

If Iran did not accept an agreement within 12 hours, the US president assured, on his social network, Truth Social, that “47 years of extortion, corruption and death would finally come to an end (…) in one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world.”

“I don’t want this to happen, but will probably happen“, threatened the millionaire.

The vague statement triggered hours of uncertainty and tension, with speculation that those in the Middle East, more specifically in a country with 93 million inhabitants. But it was bluffit seems: less than an hour and a half before the deadline he himself had set, Trump backed down and accepted a , conditioned on the “COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE and SAFE reopening” of the Strait of Hormuz.

In that short space of time, a lot has happened. The threat generated immediate alarm in foreign capitals, financial markets, multinationals and among United States allies, who spent the day trying to understand what Trump really planned to do.

If people at home were guessing about what would happen “that night”, Washington’s allies and regional mediators also launched an attempt to find a political solution or, at least, buy time, writes .

Already Europaseveral officials met by phone and, according to sources at the American newspaper, came to the conclusion that Trump would end up backing down. But NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was already heading to Washington when the message was published and had meetings scheduled for Wednesday with Trump, Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

And no Irananxiety and fear set in that energy infrastructures would be destroyed in the following hours. Many residents began preparing for electricity and gas outages and discussing whether it would be safer to stay or leave immediately, after five weeks of war and — according to HRANA — more than 3,500 dead.

Less than half an hour after Trump’s publication, Iranian officials informed Egypt that Tehran had cut off direct communications with American negotiators. In this regard, several Arab officials have warned that the North American threat could produce precisely the opposite effect to that intended, fearing the most radical wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which has threatened to create chaos.

The Pentagon and military commands were already preparing possible attacks against Iranian energy infrastructures, according to two official US sources from the WSJ, who, however, guarantee that the objectives of a possible military attack were much more limited than Trump’s public threat.

In the US, dozens of Democrats defended Trump’s removal from office through the 25th Amendment or other mechanisms.

War crime?

Similar threats had already been made by the North American president, who had promised to leave “all of Iran’s power plants” destroyed. Experts in military and international law see these threats as potential war crimesif they come to fruition in the terms in which they were formulated. This depends on specific criteria, they say, and several questions:

– do the targets of the operation have legitimate military objectives?

– is the use of force proportional?

– will measures be taken to minimize harm to civilians?

There is a fundamental problem: Trump’s threat was so pervasive that it seems to ignore any framing. But “even if specific civilian infrastructure qualified as a military objective”, an attack would still be prohibited if it posed a risk of “excessive incidental civilian damage”, warned the UN Secretary-General’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, cited by .

Furthermore, purposefully cutting off another country’s electricity affects hospitals, water supply systems, treatment plants and would most likely have fatal consequences for civilians.

A power plant can, in certain cases, be attacked if it also supplies power to military bases, says Michael Schmitt, an international law expert, but such an attack must not “cause disproportionate harm to the civilian population, and everything possible must be done to minimize that harm.” Regarding other words from Trump (that Iran would face “Power Plant Day and Bridge Day all in one”), the American confesses: “It clearly seems like a threat of illegal action“.

Commanders (Americans, in this case) have an obligation to evaluate less destructive alternatives, such as targeting specific substations or transmission lines, rather than eliminating the entire installation.

Republican Senator Joni Ernst rejected the idea that the president was threatening to commit a war crime, and pointed to the fact that Trump was just using a strategic pressure trick. But Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen classified the threat as a “textbook war crime”, considering that the declared target is civilian infrastructure for the purpose of coercion.

And accountability? Dujarric, from the UN, explained that the formal classification of a war crime would be up to a court, but Katherine Thompson, from the Cato Institute, cited by , explains that, in practice, the only realistic route here would be the US Congress — but stopping Trump would be practically impossible without sufficient support in both chambers.

“This is the inconvenient truth and detailed information about international law”, says the senior researcher in defense and foreign policy studies at the think tank: “it only works if sovereign nations are willing to cede their sovereignty to a foreign body in exchange for accountability.”