[ceejayoz]

Wasn’t that in response to Trump posting that he’d hit theirs?

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-hegseth-and...

> In a Truth Social post on March 30, Trump warned that the U.S. would obliterate "all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet 'touched.'"

[pjc50]

Iran was having a water crisis before all this, to the extent of considering relocating the capital city away from Tehran's current location. Bombing Iranian water infrastructure will kill a lot of civilians, just as similar things happened in the Yemeni civil war (which Iran is a participant in). It's disheartening how much the prospect of mass murder is met with a shrug.

[graemep]

It follows Trumps threats to destroy power plants, but predates the threat you quote. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/22/iran-says-dest...

AFAIK there is no exemption that says it is OK to commit war crimes if the other side does.

If attacking power plants and oil production is a war crime, then Russia, Ukraine, and many other countries are guilty of it.

[embedding-shape]

> AFAIK there is no exemption that says it is OK to commit war crimes if the other side does.

Of course not, but I still think the expectation that someone doesn't commit war crimes against you disappears relatively quickly when you're openly and proudly admitting you'll open to violating the rules of war and saying international humanitarian law doesn't matter.

[nkrisc]

That may be so, but remember that Ukraine is fighting for its very survival, and Iran may be as well.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Wasn’t that in response to Trump posting that he’d hit theirs?

It's Iran. They haven't been following international law since 1979. That isn't an excuse to commit war crimes against them. But Iran really doesn't have any legs to stand on when it comes to complaining about targeting civilian infrastructure–they and their proxies have been doing this for decades.

[curt15]

>They haven't been following international law since 1979.

History doesn't start in 1979. Why not go back to 1953? Overthrowing another country's elected government is no more conscionable under international law.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Why not go back to 1953? Overthrowing another country's elected government is no more conscionable under international law

Nobody said you can't. I don't think the point is undermined. Neither the U.S. nor Iran have shown any consistent affection for international law.

[srean]

This "both sides" game does not carry much weight when one side, the US and Britain, made the bad faith move on Iran first.

Stubbing one's toe and complaining "both sides" - the pebble and me.

Complaining I am being hit back because I hit first, does not elicit support. Especially, when one is less than forthcoming about who made the move on a sovereign country first. Made a move just because that country had resources you are interested in.

If you want the resource then buy it. Norway nationalised it's oil, Iran had equal sovereign right to do so.

You and I agree on many things. This one is not one of them.

[JumpCrisscross]

> This "both sides" game does not carry much weight when one side, the US and Britain, made the bad faith move on Iran first

Trying to disentangle who did what first in the Middle East is a fool's errand. Practically any living human can trace descendence to someone who was harmed by any other group in that region because that's where the first civilisation was born and almost every one after it had cause for crossroads.

> Complaining I am being hit back because I hit first, does not elicit support

If one dude stabs another, they're at fault. If that dude stabs the first one back, I'm sympathetic to their cause of action but not how they prosecuted it.

> Norway nationalised it's oil, Iran had equal sovereign right to do so

If Iran nationalised its oil and then didn't go on a vendetta against Israel, together with various spawned proxy groups dotting the region, every one of their neighbors wouldn't be standing by today while they get pummeled.

[srean]

> Trying to disentangle who did what first in the Middle East is a fool's errand.

Not at all and we are talking Iran not ME in general. Your sentence recalls to the mind that famous quote by Upton Sinclair about self imposed lack of comprehension.

It's ridiculous to think of a just prosecution when only one side is held accountable and the other gets hegemony enforced immunity.

When Iran nationalised their oil US used a military coup to upend their parliamentary democracy and place a puppet dictator in place, who among other things ran torture camps for dissenters. Iran's action are a retaliation against US and its proxies who have meddled and attacked Iran's sovereign destiny and financial health.

[graemep]

Hardly anyone consistently follows international law.

[megous]

At least the Iran leaders are not out of control nutjobs, compared to US president, and electorat/cronnies who put him to power and gave him nukes:

CNN: Trump threatens Iran ahead of deadline: "A whole civilization will die tonight" (speaking about 92 million people)

[megous]

Just claiming something doesn't make it true. And also there's the whole scale thing.

[JumpCrisscross]

> there's the whole scale thing

Sort of? I don't think that's really how war crimes work. Unless we're objectively in eye-for-an-eye territory, in which case we're not really talking about international law anymore. (To be clear, I think everyone talking about international law in this conflict is posturing. We've been collectively setting new norms for years, and between Russia, China and America, the rules seem to have inched closer to total war.)

[megous]

It doesn't matter. Killing 34 something children like Hamas did vs 20 000 something children like Israel did in the same conflict.

Or threatening some water facility in a country with functioning air defense vs threatening entire population of 92 million with complete anihilation ("A whole civilization will die tonight" like Trump just said on behalf of all americans - credible threat from a nuclear superpower with enough nukes to spare), in a country where they can't really defend against this other than spreading the costs on enemy-allied countries.

There's bad, and there's 100x worse. And yeah, people should focus on stopping the 100x worse first, is my belief.

[JumpCrisscross]

> people should focus on stopping the 100x worse first

That's fair. When I see conflicts like this, I tend to sit back and observe. There are enough conflicts on the planet where both sides are not being bastards, and where the diffences in scale of bastardly doesn't clearly map to differences in capability (versus will).