Newsweek35%
Why Trump Threat to Hit Bridges, Power Plants May Be Considered a War Crime 43%
By Ellie Cook22% Hannah Parry34%
7/15/2026, 3:37:54 PM
Keywords: War Crimes, Iran War, Donald Trump, Iran, Strait Of Hormuz, US Military, Drones, US Central Command
BS Summary: This article contains 25 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Biased Writer Voice, and Post Hoc (False Cause), with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 26.1% saturation with 296 hits. Analysis detected 1,590 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,134 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 46.4% and a BS Rank of 43% (9,499 of 16,550 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 57.40% of the article peer group.
President Donald Trump has threatened to strike Iran's bridges and power plants unless Tehran returns to peace talks with Washington, resurrecting fears that he is suggesting the U.S. could commit potential war crimes.
Trump's comments came as the U.S. and Iran exchanged fresh strikes, further damaging hopes for a permanent peace deal to replace the interim agreement inked in June.
Talks between U.S. and Iranian delegations have shuddered to a halt as attacks around the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping lane surged again.
Iran has effectively controlled the strait for months while the U.S. battled to reopen the strategic waterway, through which a fifth of the world's oil and gas supply typically flows.
On Wednesday, Trump said Tehran had released a U.S. national who had been detained in the country since late 2024 in a "gesture of Goodwill by Iran."
Trump did not identify the U.S. citizen but her attorney later named her as Dena Karari.
But Trump's remarks were quickly followed up by a fifth consecutive night of strikes on Iran, which the U.S. military said on late Wednesday had targeted Iranian air defenses, missile and drone sites, as well as command centers and surveillance facilities along Iran's coast.
The U.S. said it had launched attacks on multiple parts of Bandar Abbas, the southern port city sitting just north of the Strait of Hormuz where Iran bases much of its naval forces.
Tehran said early on Thursday it had targeted U.S. military bases in Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain.
A spokesperson for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said Tehran would respond to any future U.S. attacks on Iran's critical infrastructure by hitting "all the infrastructure still standing in the region," according to the country's IRNA state news agency.
On Tuesday, Trump had warned that the U.S. would "knock out" Iran's power plants and bridges "unless they get to the table and negotiate."
"Next week, it gets really bad for them," he added in a Fox News interview aired late Tuesday.
"I'll save the energy targets for last, but ultimately we'll hit energy targets."
A White House spokesperson referred back to Trump's remarks when approached for comment on Wednesday.
The White House has said the U.S. "will always act within the confines of the law" in Iran, while Trump previously told reporters he was "not at all" concerned about whether his pledges to target civilian infrastructure could amount to war crimes.
Deliberate attacks on civilians and non-military infrastructure are generally banned under several international agreements designed to limit the horrors of war, like the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Charter.
The Geneva Conventions rule out targeting sites that are "indispensable to the survival of the civilian population."
The Pentagon's own legal guidelines say civilians, military medical or religious personnel are off limits, as well as people considered *hors de combat*—not able to fight because of injury or because they have been captured.
Unless cultural buildings, monuments, facilities and other sites are "military objectives," they should not be targeted.
There are few exceptions to this rule.
The U.S. attacked a bridge under construction in the Iranian city of Karaj, northwest of Tehran, in early April.
Trump shared footage of the bridge collapsing to social media, promising there was "more to come."
**The April Threats Return—and so Do the Concerns**
Trump said in April the U.S. would target Iran's power plants and bridges—even going as far as to suggest a "whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again" if Iran didn't reopen the Strait of Hormuz by the deadline he had imposed at the time.
The comments drew immediate condemnation from some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, former officials, human rights groups, and even the pope.
The same month, more than 100 international law experts said in an open letter U.S. strikes on Iran "raise serious concerns about violations of international humanitarian law, including potential war crimes."
Onlookers have repeatedly raised concerns about how the current administration treats international law and whether U.S. military operations green-lighted by the government could put the American soldiers actually carrying out orders from the top at risk.
Some legal experts say America's strike campaign against alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean violated international law.
At least 210 people have been killed in these attacks since they began in September 2025.
Under military law, service members are obligated to obey lawful orders, but to disobey unlawful orders.
Soldiers are not shielded from prosecution, and even jail time, just because they were following directives from the commander-in-chief.
"I don’t need international law," Trump told *The New York* Times in early January, describing the only cap on his power as his "own morality."
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, meanwhile, last year fired the top uniformed lawyers, culling the armed forces' most senior ports of call for advice on whether orders are legal.
Hegseth has previously called military lawyers "roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander-in-chief."
Washington has tried, unsuccessfully, to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz since Tehran started targeting ships in retaliation for the U.S. and Israel launching their initial attacks on Iran on February 28.
The attacks on commercial vessels have wreaked havoc with global markets, oil prices, travel routes and deliveries of vital supplies like aid to developing countries.
But the price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, has stayed lower in recent weeks than the nearly $120 a barrel marker it hit in March.
A fragile memorandum of understanding, signed by the U.S. and Iran in June, committed Tehran to making "its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days" while a longer-term peace deal is negotiated.
Trump declared last week the ceasefire was "over" as the U.S. resumed strikes.
U.S. officials had said talks with Iran had stalled amid power struggles in Tehran.
The U.S. also reinstituted a naval blockade of Iran's ports on Tuesday, despite Trump rolling back on his promise to charge 20 percent fees on cargo passing through the strait with U.S. protection.
The U.S.
Central Command, which oversees all U.S. forces in the Middle East, said on Wednesday it had fired on a Curaçao-flagged oil tanker heading for Iran's Kharg Island that it said "had ignored multiple warnings as it attempted to violate the U.S. blockade."
Roughly 90 percent of Iran's oil exports are funneled out of Kharg Island.
The military said two other commercial vessels were also contacted but complied with instructions to change course and leave the area.
*Update 7/16/2026 at 5 a.m.
ET: This article was updated with additional information.
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*Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Frances Mao, Anna Commander, Tony Phillips and Edward T.
Cummins.
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Analysis
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