Military strikes on water facilities in Iran may constitute a war crime, experts say.
Military strikes that damaged two water storage facilities in southern Iran may constitute a war crime, military and legal experts say, after reviewing media reports and visual evidence of a 10 June strike on Bemani, a small district about 2 miles from the strait of Hormuz.
It’s unclear if the strikes deliberately targeted the district’s water tanks, or if they unintentionally destroyed a key reservoir for about 20,000 people living nearby. But if the tanks were the target, then the legal question becomes critical, Brian Finucane, a former state department lawyer, said. “It’s either a military objective or it’s a civilian object: attacking one is lawful, attacking the other is a war crime,” Finucane said.
And Peter Gleick writes: “A U.U. attack on an Iranian water system follows a disturbing pattern. Attacks on #water systems must stop, and international law must be respected. Alone, this won’t solve the long-standing enmities in the region, but expanding cooperation over water would be an important step in cooling tensions and moving from war to peace.”
