Tag: war crimes

Hegseth’s call for ‘no mercy’ to Iranians deemed war crime

US War Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing accusations of violating domestic and international laws prohibiting war crimes by declaring that “no quarter” or mercy would be given to Iranian forces.

The legal definition of the term means surrendering Iranian soldiers would be executed by American troops rather than taken prisoner. US officials and legal experts have responded by accusing Hegseth of encouraging war crimes.

”We will keep pressing. We will keep pushing, keep advancing. No quarter, no mercy for our enemies,” Hegseth said at a press briefing on Iran on Friday.

Some US officials and legal scholars have argued that the remarks went beyond tough rhetoric and strayed into criminality.

Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona blasted Hegseth, saying his comment “isn’t some wannabe tough guy line” but rather an illegal order that jeopardizes US military service members. It also shows “there was never a clear strategy for this war,” the lawmaker added.

Dan Maurer, a retired US Army lieutenant colonel and judge advocate, published a hypothetical memo Hegseth should receive from the Pentagon legal counsel, informing him of criminal liability for himself and any subordinate who followed his directive to deny quarter.

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Pro-War Republican Senator Apologizes For Iran Girls’ School Massacre After Trump Blames Tehran

A Republican senator apologized this week for what US military investigators have reportedly determined was an American missile strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran that killed around 175 people—mostly children—amid continued sidestepping by President Donald Trump, who has blamed Tehran for the massacre.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.)—who supports the US-Israeli war on Iran—first apologized for the attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab during a Monday interview with NBC News senior national political reporter Sahil Kapur. “It was terrible,” Kennedy said. “We made a mistake… I’m just so sorry it happened.”

Kennedy repeated his apology Tuesday on CNN, telling political correspondent Kasie Hunt: “The investigation may prove me wrong. I hope so. The kids are still dead, but I think it was a horrible, horrible mistake. I wish it hadn’t happened. I’m sorry it happened.”

Reuters first reported last week that US military investigators believe American forces carried out the school strike, a preliminary conclusion that came on the heels of a New York Times analysis that found the US was “most likely to have carried out the strike” due to its near-simultaneous bombing of a nearby Iranian naval base.

This week, Iranian officials displayed fragments from what is believed to be the Tomahawk missile used in the school bombing. The remnants were marked with the names of two US arms companies, a Pentagon contract number, and the words “Made in USA”.

On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that the ongoing military probe has determined that the US launched the Tomahawk strike, which paramedics and victims’ relatives said was a so-called “double-tap,” in which the attacker bombs a target and then follows up with a second strike meant to kill survivors and first responders. Investigators attribute the strike to a “targeting error,” according to the Times.

This, as Trump—who warned as his illegal war started that “bombs will be dropping everywhere”—continued sidestepping blame for the attack. On Saturday, Trump said aboard Air Force One that “based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.“

Two days later, the president falsely claimed that Iran has “some” Tomahawk missiles and may have used one of them to bomb the school. Iran has no Tomahawks—which are highly restricted and sold only to a handful of close allies—and the US does not sell weapons to the Iranian government, with the notable exception of the Iran-Contra Affair, when the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Tehran in order to fund anti-communist Contra terrorists in Nicaragua.

Other senior Trump administration officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and US Ambassador to the United Nations Michael Waltz have declined to back the president’s claims and have instead deferred to the ongoing military investigation. Kennedy told NBC News and CNN that the school bombing was unintentional.

“Other countries do that sort of thing intentionally, like Russia,” he told Kapur. “We would never do that intentionally.”

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US News Orgs Nearly Silent on Israel’s Violent Suppression of Journalism

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) recently published two meticulous reports that further expose Israel’s violent repression of journalism, in its ongoing genocide in Gaza and elsewhere.

CPJ published a report on February 19 titled ‘‘’We Returned From Hell’: Palestinian Journalists Recount Torture in Israeli Prisons.” CPJ collected 59 in-depth testimonies from Palestinian journalists released from Israeli custody since October 7, 2023.

The report goes into excruciating and painstaking detail about the experiences of 56 journalists, who told CPJ they were “repeatedly beaten inside prisons by authorities, as well as during arrest and transfer to the facilities.”

Less than a week later, CPJ published a report (2/25/26) that found “Israel was responsible for two-thirds of all journalist and media-worker killings in 2025”—86 of the 129 deaths CPJ recorded.

That was an uptick from 2024 (when Israel was responsible for 85 out of 124) and 2023 (78 of 99), CPJ revealed.

Taken together, these reports added more evidence of Israel’s illegal and shameless targeting of the journalists who cover its war crimes.

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At Sea: Goliath Crushes David (David Wasn’t Even Fighting)

Americans of a certain disposition are cheering and thumping their chests in celebration of the fact that their navy, the largest and most-expensive navy in the world, just sank the first “enemy warship” with a torpedo fired from a US submarine since the Big One that ended in 1945.

And so it did: a not-yet-identified US Navy fast attack nuclear submarine displacing between 3500 and 10,000 tons fired one $4.2-million torpedo at a “blind” and possibly unarmed Iranian destroyer of 1,500 tons displacement returning home from a non-hostile participation in an international naval exhibition in the Bay of Bengal hosted by the Indian Navy. This triumph was attained with a Mark 48 torpedo said to be capable of sinking a 100,000-ton aircraft carrier with a single well-placed hit, marking the first submarine kill since 1945 in which the submarine was larger (possibly seven times larger) than its target on the surface. (Running out of targets, the submarine USS Torsk took out two Japanese coastal patrol boats of 745 tons on the last day of World War II, perhaps launching a proud tradition of America’s Silent Service that lives on to this day.)

The unlucky IRIS Dena was “blind” because its entire ability to detect underwater threats was embodied in the helicopter it was designed to carry and deploy, but which it did not carry, since it was on a “mission” that did not contemplate hostilities of any kind. That the Dena was indeed blind to the presence of the submarine was of course known to the American attacker, who made the otherwise-risky decision to remain at periscope depth after launching the torpedo, in order to capture exciting film footage for the people back home who were the purported beneficiaries of the slaughter.

The Dena may likewise be supposed to have been “unarmed.” The launchers for four anti-aircraft and four anti-ship missiles with which it was equipped may have been empty. It also sported a 3-inch gun on its foredeck along with smaller guns for air defense, for which it may have had ammunition aboard, so it may indeed have been armed, although in no way against submarine threats.

The grotesquerie of a small warship being sunk by a submarine at least twice its size is pointed up by the November 1944 sinking of the aircraft carrier Shimano, at 65,000 tons the largest ship ever sunk by submarine-launched torpedo, by the USS Archerfish, displacing 2,500 tons when submerged (its heaviest). The submarine hit the aircraft carrier with four torpedoes. A further incongruity with the norms of submarine warfare is that US nuclear attack submarines are faster underwater than the Dena’s maximum speed of 25 knots. The hapless Iranian couldn’t have outrun its American pursuer even if it had known she was being shadowed. The time and place of the attack were entirely the attacker’s choice.

The use of an almost-2-ton torpedo to kill 150 of Dena’s 180-man crew cannot be blamed on any malice or cruelty on the part of the American submarine’s captain; the Mk 48 torpedo has been “standard issue” on US submarines for over 30 years, and was quite likely the only type of torpedo the attacking vessel had ready to launch at the chosen moment.

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Attacks on Iran a breach of international law, Swiss defence minister says

The United States and Israel have broken international law with their attacks on Iran, said Swiss Defence Minister Martin Pfister in an interview published on March 8.

He is the latest European leader to raise concerns about the conflict.

Legal experts have said many countries will consider the attacks unjustified under the United Nations Charter, under which member countries must refrain from using force or the threat of force without UN authorisation or unless acting in self-defence.

Mr Pfister, speaking to the SonntagsZeitung newspaper, said: “The Federal Council is of the opinion that the attack on Iran constitutes a violation of international law.

“In our view, it constitutes a violation on the prohibition of violence.” He also called on all sides to halt the fighting to protect the civilian population. The Federal Council is the Swiss Cabinet.

Mr Pfister said he was referring to all the countries not complying with the prohibition on violence, including the US and Israel.

“The Americans and Israel have attacked Iran from the air. In doing so, they, like Iran, violated international law,” he added.

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‘Cowardly and Despicable’: Hegseth Condemned for Sinking of ‘Defenseless’ Iranian Ship

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday was condemned for his boasts on Wednesday about sinking an Iranian military ship after allegations emerged that it was “defenseless” at the time it was torpedoed in international waters by a US submarine.

Military.com reported Thursday that the Iranian ship had been departing from a biennial multinational naval training exercise that it had been invited to participate in by the Indian government.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has so far remained silent on the US attack on the ship, but other politicians in India delivering sharp condemnations.

According to the Times of India, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi tore into Modi for not speaking up after the US torpedoed a boat that his government had invited into its waters.

“The conflict has reached our backyard, with an Iranian warship sunk in the Indian Ocean,” Gandhi said. “Yet the PM has said nothing. At a moment like this, we need a steady hand at the wheel. Instead, India has a compromised PM who has surrendered our strategic autonomy.”

In a social media post, former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal said there was no way that the Iranian ship could have been perceived as any kind of military threat.

“I am told that as per protocol for this exercise ships cannot carry any ammunition,” he wrote. “It was defenseless… The attack by the US submarine was premeditated as the US was aware of the Iranian ship’s presence in the exercise to which the US navy was invited but withdrew from participation at the last minute, presumably with this operation in mind.”

Drop Site News reporter Ryan Grim noted that, in addition to striking what appears to have been a defenseless boat, the US also didn’t help rescue any of the shipwrecked men who were aboard the vessel.

“The Sri Lanka Navy was left to pull the dead bodies from the water,” Grim commented. “I am hard pressed to think of any other nation throughout history that would do something so cowardly and despicable. We are genuinely in a league of our own, and American media—mostly shrugging off the bombing of a girls school and acting as if carpet bombing Tehran is a normal military tactic—is deeply complicit.”

Author Bruno Maçães also pointed to the decision to leave the shipwrecked crew at sea as an act of historic depravity.

“Really quite extraordinary that the US bombed an Iranian ship and then left the surviving sailors to drown,” Maçães wrote. “There are many many accounts of the Nazis or Imperial Japan saving survivors at sea. I see we have now dropped below that level.”

Mohamad Safa, executive director of PVA Patriotic Vision, an international multilateral organization with special consultative status at the United Nations Economic and Social Council, said that the US attack on the Iranian ship constituted either a war crime or straight-up murder.

“What Pete Hegseth ordered the military to do violates international law,” he wrote. “The Iranian ship was near Sri Lanka, in international waters outside the combat zone and on a training exercise. Under the Geneva Conventions, you are obligated to rescue the crew of a ship that you sink during war. Abandoned any survivors and leaving them to drown is illegal and a war crime.”

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Iranian warship hit by US torpedo was ‘defenceless’, former Indian official claims

An Iranian warship destroyed in a US torpedo strike on Wednesday was “defenceless” after taking part in an international naval exercise as a guest of the Indian navy, a former Indian official has claimed.

Former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal said in a post on X that “the Iranian ship will not be where it was if we had not invited it to talk [sic] part in our Milan exercise.

“The Iranian naval personnel had paraded before our president,” he added.

The IRIS Dena, described as a destroyer, had taken part in an international naval exercise in India last month and was making its way back to Iran from Visakhapatnam, where the joint exercise ended on 25 February.

According to reports, the rules of the exercise stipulated that no ammunition was allowed on participating ships.

Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister, Vijitha Herath, told the country’s parliament that the vessel was sailing outside Sri Lanka’s territorial waters on Wednesday when it sent a distress signal at 5:08 am local time.

Sri Lanka responded by sending naval ships and its air force to the endangered vessel. Around 87 bodies and 32 survivors were rescued, with some found to be “seriously injured,” Herath said.

Speaking to reporters in Washington, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the sinking illustrated that the US-Israeli war on Iran was stretching beyond its borders.

The Iranian ship “thought it was safe in international waters,” but “instead, it was sunk by a torpedo,” Hegseth said.

“America is winning, decisively, devastatingly and without mercy,” he added.

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Israeli strike on Iranian school kills over 100 children – media

Over 100 students have been killed and dozens injured in an Israeli airstrike on a girls’ primary school in the city of Minab, in southern Iran, according to the country’s news agency Tasnim. The attack comes amid ongoing airstrikes on the Islamic Republic by Israel and the US.

Israel launched what it described as a pre-emptive operation against Iranian military and nuclear-related targets on Saturday, saying the strikes were aimed at neutralizing threats posed by Iran. US President Donald Trump later said Washington was joining the operation, citing the failure of nuclear diplomacy as a direct trigger for the renewed bombing.

One of the strikes reportedly targeted an elementary school in the city of Minab, killing at least 148 students and leaving 95 others injured, according to local officials.

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Israeli soldier confesses to murder, sexual assault in Gaza during live stream

A video shared on social media platforms has ignited widespread anger online after an Israeli soldier openly confessed to committing atrocities, including murder and rape, in the Gaza Strip during two years of genocidal war against Palestinians in the besieged coastal territory.

In a live TikTok broadcast featuring American YouTuber Jeff Davidson, the soldier said, “We don’t just kill, we also rape,” alluding to acts committed by Israeli forces against women and children in Gaza.

In the live stream conversation, held during the Gaza onslaught but only made public recently, Davidson first inquired about the soldier’s identity and military connection. The individual claimed to be part of the Israeli military and broadcasting from inside Gaza.

When confronted by Davidson with the reality that the Israeli army caused the devastation in Gaza, the soldier acknowledged it without hesitation or any sign of regret.

The soldier directed the camera outward and detailed widespread devastation in the area, as the American interviewer requested him to display his surroundings.

“You wanna see Gaza? Don’t be surprised, there’s no house here. Flat, all flat,” the soldier said.

Davidson responded, “You guys flattened it?” The soldier replied: “Oh yeah.”

The discussion heated up when the soldier tried to rationalize attacking children by presenting a picture of a child with a gun, asserting he discovered it in a destroyed house.

Davidson rejected his assertion, emphasizing that children protecting themselves from an invading military can never warrant killing or attacking them. He also held the Israeli regime accountable for the dire situation in Gaza.

In a surprising turn, the soldier continued, stating, “We have killed women and children,” and coldly added: “And by the way, don’t worry…we rape them too.”

Human rights organizations have highlighted the video as strong proof of grave war crimes perpetrated by the Israeli military against Gaza civilians, asserting that backing from successive US administrations and Western allies fosters a perceived culture of impunity for such offenses.

Gaza’s Health Ministry announced on Sunday that 726 bodies have been retrieved since the ceasefire agreement with Israel came into effect on October 10 last year.

The ceasefire concluded Israel’s two-year genocide that started on October 7, 2023.

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