Strait of Hormuz

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Former President Donald Trump issued an ultimatum to Iran that shifts his focus from Iran’s armed forces to the country’s power grid, threatening strikes on energy infrastructure that supplies homes and hospitals. The 51‑word social media post, much of it in capital letters, marks a sharp escalation from his earlier messaging about U.S. success hitting Iran’s air force, navy and missile production. Geoffrey Corn, a law professor at Texas Tech University and a retired Army lieutenant colonel who served as a military lawyer, said the message did not bear the hallmarks of legal vetting needed to justify attacking civilian infrastructure.

“It certainly has a feeling of ready, fire, aim,” Corn said of Trump’s moving strategy.

“That type of widespread attack would probably be a war crime,” Corn said. For military leaders, he added, such an order could force a choice between obeying an order to carry out a war crime or refusing and facing criminal sanction for willful disobedience. “He overestimated his ability to control the events once he unleashed this torrent of violence.”

What international law requires before the lights go out

Modern laws of armed conflict draw bright lines between civilians and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives. Under widely accepted rules reflected in Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions and in customary international humanitarian law, attackers must distinguish targets, ensure incidental harm to civilians is not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, and take feasible precautions to verify targets. These obligations sit alongside the United Nations Charter’s core prohibition on the use of force, except in self‑defense or with Security Council authorization, which frames any decision by a state to expand a conflict to new categories of targets.

Power plants are not per se immune; they may be struck only if they qualify as military objectives and pass a stringent proportionality test that weighs foreseeable civilian harm. The definition of “military objective” used to assess dual‑use sites such as power stations-objects that serve both civilian life and military operations-is widely treated as customary law, even for states that are not parties to Additional Protocol I, meaning the core standards still bind parties through general state practice.

The U.S. Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual codifies these obligations for American forces, including a presumption that persons and objects are protected unless the available information shows they are military objectives, and it underscores the duty to take feasible verification precautions before attacking. Those internal rules are not just guidance; they shape how civilian and uniformed lawyers inside the Pentagon are expected to assess any presidential directive to broaden target sets to include energy infrastructure.

The chain of command when an order may be unlawful

Corn’s warning touches a live issue for commanders and rank‑and‑file alike: service members have a legal duty to refuse “manifestly” unlawful orders. U.S. military doctrine explains that an order so clearly illegal that a person of ordinary understanding would recognize its criminal character-such as an order to intentionally target civilians-must be disobeyed, even at personal risk to the subordinate who refuses.

In practice, that places any sweeping instruction to “turn out the lights” for an entire nation’s civilian grid squarely in the space where military lawyers, combatant commanders and combat crews would have to make fast, high‑stakes judgments. Senior officers would be expected to press for intelligence demonstrating a valid military objective, assess whether alternative means could achieve the same effect with less civilian harm, and document those deliberations for potential later scrutiny by Congress, inspectors general or international courts.

How wars have treated power grids

Recent history shows why the law sets such a high bar for grid attacks and why they draw intense scrutiny, not only from humanitarian groups but also from legislatures and international bodies:

• 1991, Iraq: Coalition air operations struck much of Iraq’s electrical system, with extensive downstream effects on water, sewage treatment and hospital services documented by independent observers and rights monitors. The scale of civilian disruption helped fuel later debates in Washington and allied capitals over whether the campaign’s targeting rules had gone too far.
• 1999, Serbia: NATO used so‑called “graphite bombs” and other munitions to disable large portions of Serbia’s electricity supply; the legality and humanitarian consequences were widely debated during and after the campaign, and the operation became a case study in alliance decision‑making on dual‑use targets.
• 2024-2026, Ukraine: UN human rights monitors and humanitarian agencies assessed that repeated, wide‑area strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure created predictable, severe harm to civilians and likely violated international humanitarian law; international partners publicly condemned those tactics, and some governments cited them when tightening sanctions and export controls.
• 2024, International Criminal Court: Judges issued arrest warrants for senior Russian officials in connection with alleged strikes on Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure, highlighting criminal exposure for directing unlawful attacks on energy systems and signaling that “turning off the power” is no longer seen as legally or politically low‑risk.

Humanitarian stakes of a grid war

Electricity underpins life‑saving services: intensive care units, operating theaters, ventilators, dialysis, vaccine cold chains, water pumping and sanitation. The World Health Organization notes that reliable power is essential for safe childbirth, immunization and most routine and emergency procedures-and that generators often cannot meet full hospital demand. The International Committee of the Red Cross likewise warns that disruptions to power and water have cascading effects on health systems, from spoiled medicines to sewage overflows and waterborne disease.

These concerns are legally salient, not just moral. Medical units and transports enjoy specific protections under the laws of war; parties must respect and protect their functioning and enable essential services-such as electricity and fuel-needed for care delivery. Interference that foreseeably deprives hospitals of indispensable services can raise separate violations in addition to any unlawful attack on civilian objects, and it can be examined later by international investigators or domestic prosecutors looking at patterns of conduct rather than single strikes.

Iran goes to the United Nations

Iran’s UN ambassador, in a letter to the Security Council cited by the state‑run IRNA news agency, warned that deliberate targeting of power plants would be inherently indiscriminate and a war crime. Such letters are circulated as official Council documents and can trigger briefings or meetings at a member’s request; any substantive Council decision, however, requires at least nine affirmative votes and no vetoes by the five permanent members under Article 27 of the UN Charter.

The White House has already faced intense backlash after the U.S. was blamed for a missile strike on an Iranian elementary school that killed more than 165 people, sharpening pressure from Congress and key allies to demonstrate that any future targeting decisions will be tightly constrained.

As of March 23, 2026, Iran’s letter has been circulated to the Security Council; diplomats say any move toward a resolution or presidential statement would test fault lines among the permanent members over the scope of self‑defense and over whether deliberate attacks on national power grids can ever be squared with the baseline protections in the Charter and the Geneva framework.