President Donald Trump announced a major address to the nation on the status of the war in Iran, claiming major military successes.
On Wednesday afternoon, news organizations received a lengthy White House statement with quotes from the president and top administration officials citing war objectives that they say have been met, a total of 32 of them.
The objectives they say have been met amount to nearly one per day since the conflict began, and some experts are speculating that the timing of Wednesday’s address could indicate that the president is aiming to announce a potential conditional ceasefire.
Opening up the Straight of Hormuz is the condition that the U.S. is requiring to consider a ceasefire, according to a social media post by Trump himself. He says the waterway must be “open, free and clear” to oil tankers and cargo ships.
“So the real question is, is would Iran believe that if they meant this term, these terms of opening up the strait?” asked University of Chicago global affairs expert and political science professor Paul Poast. “That the Trump administration and Israel combined would actually follow through with that offer and continue to stick with it.”
Even as a possible ceasefire is discussed, the U.S. continues to bomb targets in Iran, on Wednesday blowing up a major Republican Guard missile barracks.
But with threats by Trump to attack Iranian water treatment plants and public power utilities, former U.S. Ambassador at large for war crimes Stephen Rapp says the threat alone could be a war crime.
Poast, a foreign policy expert with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, says actually bombing public utilities is a certain war crime.
“Absolutely, absolutely. That one of the clear lines that’s drawn in the various laws of war, whether these are laws that the U.S. has signed on to or other types of treaties, is the idea that there’s supposed to be distinction, distinction between military and civilian,” said Poast. “When you start making threats, you’re going to directly target civilian infrastructure, especially civilian power infrastructure. That is something that immediately almost all experts of laws of war will point to, say that is a violation of laws war, that is war crime.”
And then there is NATO, the transatlantic alliance headquartered in Brussels that has been the backbone of global order since World War II ended. Trump is now threatening to leave because European NATO members haven’t stepped up to help fight Iran.
“Trump is definitely someone who runs hot and cold when it comes to NATO,” Poast said. “He is very well known for ridiculing NATO allies for not spending enough, even expressing it to the point of anger.”
Still, Poast says it isn’t likley that such a withdrawal would be a quick and painless proces.
“It’s important to remember is that it would be very hard for Trump to be able to unilaterally pull the United States out of NATO. It is a treaty, a ratified treaty, and recently the Senate actually reaffirmed the U.S.’s commitment to NATO and actually put in a law that a U. S. President cannot just unilaterally remove the United Stated from NATO,” he said.
The UK convening a virtual meeting on Thursday of 35 nations to coordinate a military reopening of the Straight of Hormuz whenever the war ends. The meeting could potentially calm Trump’s NATO nerves. The ceasefire talk is being tempered by a letter late Wednesday from the Iranian president chiding the war as “anti-America First.”
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