I'm Nicole Johnston and you're listening to seven AM. It's been a war of shifting deadlines for President Trump, and his third one expires this morning. The President's demanding Iran reopen this strait of hor Moos or the US will strike every bridge and power plan in the country. Destroy all this, and you destroy Iran Today. Rachel Van Lendingham, a former military lawyer in the US Air Force, on Trump's case for targeting civilian infrastructure and what's it all
mean for international law. It's Wednesday, April eight.
US President Donald Trump has used abuse of language to call in Iran to let ships through the street.
Off her moves as he threw the children are watching. We warned the president did not use polite language.
Quote.
Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day, all wrapped up in one in Iran. There will be nothing like it. Open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell.
Just watch, Rachel, when Donald Trump made this threat to hit each and every one of Iran's power plants, what did you think of that? Was that just another empty threat from Trump? Or is this something that the US will actually do?
Well?
I sure hope they won't it because they'd be committing war crimes for which there are no statute of limitations and there's universal jurisdiction. It did seem to be more than just an idle threat because the press briefing that he gave that was ostensibly focused on the rescue, a successful rescue mission of a downed pilot, But during the question answer session he made it very clear that.
Every bridge in Iran will be decimated by twelve o'clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again.
I mean complete demolition.
And then he made comments about you know, bombing back to the Stone Age and that they'd be set back for one hundred years, et cetera.
Do I want to do that note? Do I want to destroy their infrastructure? No, it will take them one hundred years to rebuild.
That is not just empty rhetoric. That is a threat to engage in a war crime. That's technically called the war crime of indiscriminate attack. So we don't just go after every single bridge and every single power plant.
We have to show that. Oh, well, first we're.
Going to determine whether or not it's what we call a lawful military objective. But fundamentally, the threat to destroy and he didn't say disabled, he said he was going to destroy each and every bridge in Iran, each and every power plant in Iran, is threatening to commit the
war crime of indiscriminate attack. Second, it is impermissible to intimidate the civilian population during time of war by violence or reasonably foreseeable consequences of President Trump threatening total warfare against Iran by destroying every bridge and every power plant is that the civilian population will be terrified.
Why, you need electricity to live in the modern world.
You need electricity to run hospitals, you need electricity to purify your water, and so it's really horrific what he's actually threatened to do.
So, Rachel, what are the justifications that the US could use if it wanted to go after these power plans, Because it's not the first time that we've seen civilian infrastructure struck during a war, for example Gaza and Ukraine, So they must be some way that countries are trying to justify it.
Well, I definitely wouldn't use Gaza as a role model for how to abide by the law of arm conflict, and I wouldn't use Russia attacking electrical grids in Ukraine as a paragon of virtue. Either in the United States has wrongly condemned Russia for war crimes.
There have been numerous credible reports of hospitals, schools, theaters, et cetera being intentionally attacked. The United Nations and other credible observers have confirmed hundreds of civilian deaths, and we believe that the exact civilian death told will be in the thousands.
However, individual bridges, individual power plants, despite being originally civilian objects, can become a lawful military objective.
A key bridge Niete Ran was among the targets hit. Mister Trump posted a video of its destruction, urging Iran to agree a CEASEFI ideal before it's too late.
It's a two step process.
It's typically by either their current or intended use, not speculative hypothetical. Maybe the Iranians will use this power plant eventually someday to produce energy to fuel a particular weapons production company. No, it's not speculative, it's intended use. We have to have facts to show they intend to use it. Second of all, the attack right the strike here, the destruction that President Trump has promised has to provide a definite military advantage.
That's not the end of the analysis.
If a power plant's only providing electricity to a military base, it's an easy military, lawful military objective take it out.
But that's not what we're talking about.
We're talking about these power plants to produce electricity for that is civilian infrastructure, for civilian cities, civilian home civilian hospitals. The United States is required to take all feasible precautions to mitigate the impact of that military strike, that action
on civilians. Then the last question becomes, Okay, even using all feasible precautions and attack, we have to consider whether or not that civilian harm is excessive compared to the direct and concrete military advantage to be gained by taking out that power grid. And President Trump ignor that distinction completely is rejecting the entire premise of the law of war, which forms the moral and legal foundation for how Americans
and our allies fight. We are no better than the rogue state of Iran or Russia if we engage in what President Trump is said we're going to engage in.
So Rightchel right now, if you're a military commander or a military lawyer and you've got the president saying all of these things, what position are you left in.
You're left in the position that you have to obey lawful orders, and you have a legal duty and absolute legal duty to disobey patently manifestly unlawful orders. And if President Trump truly gives an order that says take out all the power plants and all the bridges, the military
has an obligation to disobey that order. The smart military commander giving Trump's mercurial and rather deranged behavior, would be yes, sir, hey boss, We've got this terrific target set of a one hundred bridges and power plants that we have determined meet the high hurdle. They contribute to military action, they offer a military advantage by destroying them. And it's definitely not going to be all the bridges and power plants.
And in Iran, right, it can't just be oh to weaken the morale of the civilian population because you're not allowed to target the civilian population. It cannot just be weakened the morale of the regime because where's the military action there. There has to be a military nexus. So by distilling his order right through the law of war, the law of arm conflict, they can get to lawful military objectives, and it's incumbent upon them to actually do so.
Otherwise they are.
Guilty of war crimes and there are no statute of limitations for those. And I don't think President Trump can part an absolute everybody within the Apartment defense sets that would be involved in these.
Strikes coming up.
Will Trump's listen to the Loyes Rachel If we could take a step back for a moment, as a military lawyer, do you think that this war was even legal in the first place.
No.
Under the framework of international law that's called the USAID bellum that governs the resort to the use of force on the global stage by states encapsulated in the United Nations Charter, the United States did not face an imminent threat of armed attack by Iran that would trigger its Article fifty one right on Article fifty one in the United Nations Charter to engage in force and self defense, and there was no United Nations Security Council resolution obviously
authorizing this. The best argument the United States could make is that that it simply joined an ongoing international arm conflict, an already ongoing war between Iran and Israel, and so we joined an allied But I don't buy that argument. There are no objective indications that there were ongoing hostilities, so I do think this is.
A war of choice.
However, the law of war doesn't care who started the war, who's the aggressor, and who's not, because its purpose is to minimize humans suffering and war, starting with civilians for us, but also starting with those service members that are fighting for their countries.
Rachel, do you think that anyone in the Pentagon right now is really sitting back and assessing the legality of these strikes.
Yes, because we have military lawyers and I was one for a long time whose job is to assess strike packages. The Geneva Conventions require that commanders have legal advisors available to them and opening on things like target packages. Despite the fact that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth fired the top military lawyers of the services.
Ultimately, I want the best possible lawyers in each service to provide the best possible recommendations, no matter what, to lawful orders that are given.
And we didn't think those particular positions.
Were well suited and so we're looking.
For the best.
He did that soon after taking office, thereby sending a message saying that you know, I don't want obstacles in my way.
I don't want any roadblocks. Well, guess what the law is a roadblock?
Do you think that Trump will pay any attention to what they come up with, legal or not legal? Oh, He's more likely to just go ahead and do what he wants.
Well. Trump has his psycho fans around them, including those at the Department of Justice and the Office of Legal Counsel, who already wrote a legal memo, a laughable legal memo that's classified. Still hasn't been released, but parts of it have been discussed in the open media, saying that it's lawful to kill civilians, to kill alleged drug smugglers outside of the time of war. But those military lawyers don't have access to the president. Usually the military lawyers advising
their commanders. I'm the chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff, and I also don't have much faith in guess he was put in that position because he President Trump thinks he's pliing. He's also not in the direct chain of command. He's not passing on orders. But I'm hoping that his lawyers are telling him, sir, we've got to be very very careful about this, and not simply because it's the law.
We don't follow the law because of law sake. We follow the law because it keeps our service members moral compasses on true north we tell them they're going to do awful things in war. We're going to order you to do awful things and war. But they're lawful and they're moral because the law has already taken into account this balance between going after military targets, military objectives and minimizing the impact on civilians.
So, Rachel, if the deadline passes, the strait of Hall moves isn't reopened, the strikes are carried out, and then down the track later on it's investigated. What would that mean for the people who gave the orders and also the soldiers and commanders at the end of the day who have to carry them out.
I mean, the president has immunity because of the US Supreme Court's decision from a few years ago that gives some pretty total immunity for official acts. President Trump will probably pardon Secretary Hegstath and give a prospective pardon, but for those military members who received manifestly unlawful orders.
Clearly unlawful orders.
Directing that every single power plant and every single bridge in Iran be destroyed is a manifestly, patently unlawful order. That means that that commander that does not disobey that order is guilty of that war crime, of indiscriminate attack or else. There's universal jurisdiction under the Geneva Conventions, meaning a country like Germany could draft war crime charges against
any of these members in the future. There is no statue to limitations, including criminal punishment if warranted by the facts, so it's not just a country should do this or actually obligated to bring war criminals to account.
What do you think all of this says about the state of international lule and how countries regarded, how the US regards it, and how healthy it is not only in the US but around the world right now.
I think the international order that was set up after World War Two, largely in part to prevent a World War III, is in danger of severe weakening and erosion, and not only the disregard for the using force to try to get what you want. That's dangerous enough as it is, But then the threats by a sitting of the United States President to engage in total warfare. So
today I see a rejection of international law. If we have a Secretary of Defense that says, you know, we're not going to fight by stupid rules of engagement.
We fight worse to win, not to defend. We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement tie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country.
Really, are we targeting children?
Now?
Are we targeting civilians?
Do we not care about the fundamental premise of the law of war that we're going to fight honorably and only go after military objectives and military personnel for say, none of that matters. Well, then we are no better than Iran, We are no better than Russia. And the United States is entering into and leading the entry into dark, dark times.
And that's frightening.
Rachel, thanks so much for talking to us today.
Thank you so much for having me.
Also in the news, one of Australia's most decorated soldiers, Ben Robert Smith, has been taken into custody over the alleged motives of unarmed Afghan civilians. Robert Smith was arrested Sydney Domestic Airport yesterday and is expected to be charged with five counts of war crime murder following a joint investigation by the Office of the Special Investigator and the
Australian Federal Police. It follows mister Robert Smith's failed defamation case against nine newspapers, in which the Federal Court found, on the balance of probabilities that he was involved in the murder of four unarmed men. No criminal findings were made and mister Robert Smith has always maintained his innocence. And Donald Trump has again lashed out of Australia for
refusing to back US military action against Iran. The U S President has accused several allies of benefiting from US protection while failing to return the favor, naming Australia alongside Japan and South Korea. When asked precisely what Australia had failed to provide, the US Prime Minister Anthony Alberizi said that wasn't a question for him to answer, but stated he wants to see a de escalation in the co inflict.
I think it's very clear that any further escalation needs to be outlined what the objective is. So we've called consistently. We haven't changed our position of calling for de escalation.
I'm Nicole Johnston. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.