Trump Brags About His Plan to Commit War Crimes in Iran

Donald Trump announced his intent to commit acts tantamount to war crimes in Iran in a Fox News interview that aired Tuesday evening.

Asked whether recent U.S. strikes against Iran will “expand,” Trump said, “Ultimately, we’ll hit energy targets.” He vowed to hit Iran “very hard” this week, and warned that “next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges. We’re going to knock out all their power plants. We’re going to knock out all their bridges, unless they get to the table and negotiate.”
TRUMP: Ultimately, we'll hit energy targets in Iran. Next week comes the bridges. We're going to knock out all of their power plants. We'll knock out all of their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate pic.twitter.com/tpnTyUygP1
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 14, 2026
International law prohibits such deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure. The Geneva Conventions protect “objects indispensable to civilian survival” from attacks or reprisals, and they bar the sort of indiscriminate, blanket strikes the president described.

This is far from the first time Trump and his military officials have made, or boasted about following through on, such threats.

For example, Trump has previously threatened to “take out … power plants that create the electricity, that create the water” and to “do things that would be so bad they could literally never rebuild as a nation again.” After bombing a highway bridge near Tehran in April, he said there was “much more to follow.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had promised the previous month to give Iranian troops “no quarter.”

And of course, also in April, Trump infamously threatened a genocide of Iran’s more than 90 million people, posting, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” ...