Who's Really Committing Crimes in Iran

War crimes are becoming a talking point in the Iran War, but the loudest accusations are aimed at the wrong country. While critics rush to brand U.S. actions in Operation Epic Fury as illegal, the actual pattern of war crimes is coming from Tehran.

It was a terrible tragedy, yes, and highly regrettable. But the strike was not criminal because it was unintentional. The missile hit the school by mistake. The actual target was an adjacent Islamic Revolutionary Guards Navy installation, of which the school building had formerly been a part.

Preliminary investigations show that the accident was caused by outdated targeting information, and Iran’s regime sees no problem placing children next to legitimate military targets, just as Hamas and Hezbollah routinely use the most vulnerable as human shields.

The crime is compounded by Iran firing cluster warheads into civilian areas in Israel. Even though Iran is not a signatory to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, these attacks are still illegal because they fail to meet the basic humanitarian tests of distinction between civilian and military targets, proportionality of harm to innocents, and precaution to avoid such injury. These bombings are textbook war crimes, but you’d never know it from the lack of outcry.

Critics of the United States also tried to criminalize the fast attack submarine USS Charlotte sinking the Iranian Frigate IRIS Dena off the south coast of Sri Lanka, killing 87 sailors. They called this a war crime because the doomed ship was in international waters, it had not been warned, it was not threatening the submarine that attacked it, and the sub did not stop to pick up survivors. However, it turned out that Charlotte had hailed Dena and twice given the crew a chance to evacuate, but Dena’s captain refused. And while Charlotte was not equipped to conduct rescue operations, United States Indo-Pacific Command did coordinate efforts with the Sri Lanka Navy. So in the end, the IRIS Dena was fair game, like all the other Iranian military vessels being sunk.

But it definitely is a war crime to attack neutral civilian ships in major international waterways protected by transit passage rights, such as in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s “closure” of the Strait, or rather conducting attacks on commercial shipping, violates the principles reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and in the internationally recognized customary law of naval warfare. Iran cannot legally attack neutral merchant ships as part of their strategy to create chaos in energy markets.

There was certainly no warning given when Iran sent a missile into the Malta-flagged container ship Safin Prestige in the Strait of Hormuz on March 4. And when the UAE-flagged tugboat Musafa 2 attempted to render assistance to the stricken vessel, Iran sank it, killing three of its seven-member crew. The war crimes crowd has been strangely silent on this tugboat’s untimely demise.

One of the most absurd charges arose from a statement from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth that there would be “no quarter” for Iran. Anti-Trump legal beagles pounced on this, claiming it was an illegal order under laws of armed conflict going back to the Hague Conventions of over a century ago. This also tied into the “disobey illegal orders” narrative the left has been peddling.

But subsequent treaties made clear that the stricture against “no quarter” referred to specific orders, not the kind of rhetorical flourishes the War Secretary is well known for. Hegseth’s statement was clearly made in the context of showing commitment to defeating the enemy, and was said to reporters, not issued to the troops. So while raising the black flag would be a war crime if it actually happened, this was not such a case, any more than chanting “Death to America!” is in itself a crime.

It is axiomatic that the United States should be held accountable if war crimes are committed. But the same rules should apply to Iran, which has been engaged in violating the law of armed conflict in plain sight repeatedly since the first hours of the war. Tehran’s entire strategy is based on illegal, indiscriminate attacks against noncombatant populations and civilian shipping. This should come as no surprise from a country that has perfected state-sponsored terrorism as a means of coercion.

Perhaps those trying to manufacture a moral case against Operation Epic Fury should save their umbrage for the lawless state which is the object of this war. And the Trump administration would do well to highlight the fact that Iran’s war crimes are many and continuing.

James S. Robbins is the Dean of Academics at the Institute of World Politics and author of the forthcoming Forging Peace Through Strength: Ronald Reagan as Commander in Chief.