The Tablet: Donald Trump has committed war crimes

08 April 2026, The Tablet 

Link: https://www.thetablet.co.uk/editors-desk/donald-trump-has-committed-war-crimes/

The conclusion is irresistible that the President of the United States has committed war crimes. Threatening to commit a war crime is a crime in itself, whether the crime is carried out or not. 

That much is clear from the statement of 100 eminent professors of international law, who have denounced the US government for the conduct of its “war of choice” against Iran. This would include Donald Trump’s warning to Iran that it faced being “bombed back into the Stone Age”. The President’s so-called Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, may also be guilty of war crimes. His statement, “We will keep pushing, keep advancing, no quarter, no mercy for our enemies”, also constituted a war crime, according to the lawyers’ statement: “In international law, it is ‘especially forbidden’ to ‘declare that no quarter will be given’, a prohibition also set out in the Department of Defence’s own Law of War Manual.”

The manual makes it clear that individual service personnel could be personally held guilty of war crimes. “Objects dedicated to civilian purposes (such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling, or a civilian school) … may not be made the object of attack, unless the available information evaluated in good faith indicates it is a military objective.” At least since the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, it has been clear that “obeying orders is no defence”. Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who heads the United States military chaplaincy service, has questioned the legitimacy of the American attack on Iran. He was asked in January whether, in general, service personnel were always bound to obey orders. He replied, “Within the realm of their own conscience it would be morally acceptable to disobey.”

Both the manual and the statement of the international lawyers explicitly follow the distinction, from the Catholic just war tradition, between jus ad bellum (reasons for going to war) and jus in bello (conduct during war). “The fact that an aggressor complies with jus in bello does not justify the legality of its military operations under jus ad bellum,” the manual states. This connection to the Catholic moral tradition makes the intervention of Pope Leo XIV even more pointed. On Palm Sunday he declared that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them”. On Easter Sunday he said, “Let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars.”Under international conventions, any jurisdiction in the world has the right and duty to prosecute war crimes, wherever committed. Where a specific case has been accepted by the International Criminal Court, a suspect could be arrested and held for trial – even if, like Trump, he does not recognise the court’s jurisdiction. And on conviction, as well as imposing a jail sentence, the court can order compensation for damage done. As the forces of law and morality increasingly close in on him, Donald Trump, it seems, is in big trouble.