The Legality of Targeting Iranian Power and Water Systems
- Admin
- Mar 31
- 16 min read
The international armed conflict involving the United States, Israel, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, which entered an acute phase on February 28, 2026, has reached a critical juncture characterized by the potential expansion of targeting to include national essential services. President Donald Trump, acting as Commander-in-Chief during what has been termed "Operation Epic Fury," issued a series of directives and public pronouncements in March 2026 suggesting that if the Strait of Hormuz is not immediately reopened and a comprehensive diplomatic deal reached "shortly," the United States will proceed with the "complete obliteration" of Iran’s electrical generating plants, oil wells, and water desalination facilities. This strategic ultimatum, while framed as a coercive diplomatic tool to resolve the blockade of a waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil flows, raises fundamental questions regarding the boundaries of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), the principle of distinction, and the absolute protections afforded to objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population.
The current hostilities constitute an International Armed Conflict (IAC), a status that triggers the full application of customary IHL rules on targeting, regardless of whether the participating states are signatories to specific treaties such as the 1977 Additional Protocol I (AP I) to the Geneva Conventions. While the United States, Israel, and Iran are not parties to AP I, the core principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution are universally recognized as customary international law (CIL) and are reflected in the military doctrine and legal manuals of each belligerent. The legality of attacking infrastructure that serves both the state's military apparatus and its eighty-five million citizens depends upon a rigorous, fact-specific analysis that balances anticipated military advantage against foreseeable civilian suffering.
The Principle of Distinction and the Rebuttable Presumption of Civilian Status
The foundational rule of IHL is the principle of distinction, which mandates that parties to a conflict must at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives. Attacks may only be directed against military objectives; the deliberate targeting of civilian objects is a war crime.
Criteria for Determining Military Objectives
Under the definition established in Article 52(2) of AP I and adopted as customary law by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), an object must satisfy a two-pronged cumulative test to be classified as a lawful military objective.
Targeting Criterion | Legal Requirement | Application to Infrastructure |
Prong 1: Effective Contribution | The object must, by its nature, location, purpose, or use, make an "effective contribution to military action". | Requires evidence that the specific facility supports current or imminent military operations (e.g., powering air defenses or naval mining). |
Prong 2: Definite Military Advantage | Its partial or total destruction, capture, or neutralization must offer a "definite military advantage" in the circumstances ruling at the time. | The advantage must be concrete and direct, not merely a speculative or general political gain, such as forcing a treaty. |
In the context of the March 2026 threats, a power plant is not targetable simply because it belongs to the Iranian state or because its destruction would cripple the national economy. Size and economic importance do not, in isolation, transform a civilian utility into a military objective. A facility only becomes a lawful target if it provides a specific, verifiable military contribution, such as supplying electricity to the coastal missile batteries or command and control nodes responsible for closing the Strait of Hormuz.
The 2023 Revision of Targeting Presumptions
A significant development in U.S. legal positioning occurred with the July 2023 revision of the DoD Law of War Manual. For decades, the United States maintained that under customary law, no legal presumption of civilian status existed for objects. This stance was based on the concern that such a presumption might provide an advantage to irregular forces or place military commanders on the "psychological defensive".
The 2023 revision reversed this position, stating that if there is doubt as to whether an object normally dedicated to civilian purposes—such as a power station or a water plant—is a military objective, commanders must presume it is a civilian object protected from attack. This brings U.S. doctrine into closer alignment with the standards set forth in Article 52(3) of AP I. Consequently, for the threats made by the Trump administration to be executed legally, the U.S. military must possess reliable, good-faith information indicating that each specific target is currently being used for military purposes, rather than relying on hypothetical or speculative considerations.
The Legality of Attacking the Iranian Electrical Grid
Electrical power systems are characterized in IHL as "dual-use" infrastructure because they typically provide electricity to both the civilian population and the military-industrial complex. While the term "dual-use" is common in strategic discourse, it is not a formal legal category in international law. An object is either a military objective or a civilian object.
Conditions for Lawful Engagement of Power Plants
A power plant qualifies as a military objective if it powers essential military functions. The DoD Law of War Manual notes that electric power stations are "generally recognized" to be of sufficient importance to a state's capacity to meet its wartime needs—such as communication, transport, and industry—that they "usually" qualify as military objectives.
However, this "usually" does not equate to "always". The legality of a strike is contingent upon the "circumstances ruling at the time". If a specific Iranian plant supports military command systems or naval assets engaged in the Hormuz blockade, its neutralization offers a definite military advantage. If, however, the target is the "largest power plant" in a metropolitan area, and the primary objective is to trigger a national blackout to demoralize the population or pressure the regime, the strike would likely be illegal. Demoralization of the population and the pursuit of political leverage are not recognized as "definite military advantages" under the laws of war.
The U.S. Doctrine of War-Sustaining Objectives
The United States maintains a controversial interpretation of military objectives that includes "war-sustaining" capabilities. This doctrine allows for the targeting of economic assets that finance the enemy's war effort, such as the oil export hub at Kharg Island or refineries.
Doctrine | Scope of Targets | International Consensus |
Traditional IHL (AP I) | Limited to objects making an "effective contribution to military action." | Majority view: Economic assets are generally protected unless directly supporting combat. |
U.S. War-Sustaining | Includes economic objects that "sustain" the capability to wage war (e.g., oil exports). | Minority view: Critiqued as overly expansive, potentially blurring the line between combatants and the civilian economy. |
Under this interpretation, the Trump administration's threat to "take the oil" by seizing or destroying Kharg Island might be justified domestically as a strike on a war-sustaining objective. However, the same logic is harder to apply to the national electrical grid, particularly portions of the grid that exclusively serve residential areas, hospitals, and water systems. IHL requires that even within a single grid, those aspects that do not support military usage and can be attacked separately must be spared.
Water Desalination Plants as Objects Indispensable to Survival
The threat to attack water desalination plants represents a more severe legal escalation. In the arid climate of southern Iran and the broader Persian Gulf, fresh water is a scarce and vital resource. Approximately 100 million people in the Gulf region rely on desalinated water for their daily survival.
Heightened Protection under Article 54 of Additional Protocol I
Water installations are granted specific, heightened protection under Article 54 of AP I and Rule 54 of Customary IHL. These rules prohibit attacking, destroying, or rendering useless "objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population" (OIS), which explicitly include drinking water installations and supplies.
The prohibition is near-absolute: it is forbidden to target OIS for the purpose of denying them to the civilian population for their sustenance value, "whatever the motive," whether to starve civilians, cause them to move, or for any other reason. Unlike general civilian objects, the protection of OIS is not waived even if they are military objectives, unless they are being used "solely" for the armed forces or in "direct support of military action". Even in cases of direct military use, attacks are prohibited if they can be expected to cause starvation or the forced movement of the civilian population.
The Case of Qeshm Island and Coastal Vulnerability
The reported strike on a desalination plant on Qeshm Island in March 2026, which allegedly provided water to 30 villages, serves as a focal point for the legal debate. If such a plant serves a civilian population, its destruction would be "manifestly unlawful" unless it could be proven that the facility supplied water only to a military base.
Coastal communities in Iran, particularly in Hormozgan and Bushehr provinces, are entirely dependent on these plants. The "obliteration" of this infrastructure would foreseeably lead to catastrophic dehydration and disease. Under International Criminal Law, the intentional deprivation of water may constitute a war crime, a crime against humanity, or even an element of genocide if done with the intent to destroy a group. The ICC Prosecutor's 2024 draft policy on environmental crimes further links the severe harm of water systems with the court's core crimes.
The Calculus of Proportionality and Reverberating Effects
Even if a portion of the Iranian power grid or a specific facility is determined to be a legitimate military objective, the attack remains unlawful if it violates the principle of proportionality.
The Rule of Proportionality
The rule of proportionality prohibits attacks that may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, or damage to civilian objects which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. This is often expressed in legal logic as a balancing test:
Advmilitary≥Harmcivilian
If the expected civilian harm is disproportionate to the tactical gain, the attack must be cancelled or suspended.
Foreseeable Indirect and Reverberating Effects
A critical element of modern proportionality assessments is the inclusion of "reverberating" or indirect effects. These are harms that are not the immediate result of the weapon's blast but are the foreseeable product of the destruction of an interconnected system.
Infrastructure Component | Immediate Physical Damage | Reverberating Civilian Harm |
Electrical Substation | Destruction of transformers/wiring. | Failure of hospital ventilators, loss of refrigeration for vaccines/food, shutdown of water pumps, failure of sewage treatment plants. |
Water Pumping Station | Physical collapse of the facility. | Dehydration, spread of cholera/dysentery, collapse of local irrigation, mass displacement of rural populations. |
The legal standard for assessing these effects is "reasonable foreseeability". A "reasonable military commander," given the wealth of information available in 2026 regarding Iran’s infrastructure, must account for the high probability that cutting the power to a major city will cause deaths in neonatal units and emergency rooms. If the military advantage sought is merely the disruption of a local military radio signal, the expected death of civilians due to power loss would be clearly excessive and therefore unlawful.
Coercive Warfare, Collective Punishment, and Terror Attacks
The Trump administration's stated purpose for the threatened attacks—to force the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz—moves the targeting logic from the realm of tactical military advantage to that of strategic political coercion. This raises grave concerns regarding the prohibitions of collective punishment and the use of terror against civilian populations.
Coercion vs. Military Advantage
In IHL, the "military advantage" must be "concrete and direct". This refers to an advantage that is substantial and relatively close to the attack, such as the destruction of an enemy's artillery or the blocking of an invasion route. Using attacks on the general population’s water and power to "achieve the full objectives of Operation Epic Fury" or to "force a deal" does not qualify as a concrete and direct military advantage.
Prohibition of Collective Punishment and Terrorism
Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Article 75 of AP I strictly prohibit "collective punishments". This involves penalizing a population for acts they did not commit, such as a government's decision to close a strait. Furthermore, IHL explicitly prohibits "acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population".
The rhetoric of "completely obliterating" national resources, as articulated in social media posts, can be interpreted as a threat intended to terrorize the Iranian public. Such a "doctrine of disruption"—systematically targeting civilian life to break national morale—was used in the 20th-century "total wars" before the codification of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and is now universally rejected as criminal.
Domestic Accountability and the Duty to Disobey Unlawful Orders
The execution of attacks on Iranian desalination plants and the national grid would involve the entire U.S. chain of command, from the President and Secretary of Defense down to individual ship captains and pilots.
The Manifestly Unlawful Order Standard
Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), service members have a legal duty to obey lawful orders, but they also have an affirmative duty to refuse manifestly unlawful orders. An order is "manifestly unlawful" if its illegality is obvious to a person of "ordinary sense and understanding".
Examples of manifestly unlawful orders include:
Directly targeting civilians or clearly civilian infrastructure.
Orders that require the commission of a war crime, such as the intentional deprivation of water to a civilian population.
Attacks on hospitals or religious sites with no military function.
As Professor Marko Milanovic of the University of Reading has noted, unless a desalination plant is used only by the military, an order to strike it would be "manifestly unlawful". Service members who carry out such orders cannot rely on the defense of "superior orders" and may be held personally liable for war crimes in both international and domestic courts.
The Role of Judge Advocates and Command Responsibility
The U.S. military relies on Judge Advocate Generals (JAGs) to provide real-time legal review of targeting lists. If the President issued an order to strike the Iranian grid for purely coercive reasons, many legal experts predict that JAGs would be duty-bound to advise against it, and senior commanders might face a constitutional crisis in balancing their oath to the Constitution with their duty to the Commander-in-Chief. Under the principle of command responsibility, leaders can be prosecuted not only for the orders they give but for failing to prevent war crimes by their subordinates.
Historical Precedents and the Evolution of Infrastructure Targeting
The legality of targeting power and water has been tested in several major conflicts, providing a body of precedent that informs the 2026 crisis.
Conflict | Strategy Employed | Legal Outcome/Consensus |
Vietnam War | Operation Rolling Thunder: Systematic bombing of N. Vietnamese power and infrastructure. | Viewed as a strategic failure that blurred civilian/military lines, leading to the development of the more restrictive 1977 AP I. |
1991 Gulf War | Coalition air campaign targeted the Iraqi national grid and water treatment as "dual-use". | Heavily criticized for causing a post-war public health crisis that killed thousands of civilians due to lack of clean water. |
NATO/Yugoslavia (1999) | Targeted power plants and the RTS media station to "disrupt" the command network. | The ICTY Review Committee found that while some targets were legal, the focus on demoralization was not a valid military advantage. |
Russia-Ukraine (2022-2026) | Russia launched systematic missile strikes on the Ukrainian power grid to deny heating and water. | Widespread condemnation; ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian commanders for "clearly excessive" incidental civilian harm. |
The 2024 ICC warrants against Russian military leadership for attacks on the Ukrainian grid are particularly relevant. They demonstrate that the international legal community now treats widespread attacks on energy infrastructure intended to deprive a population of essential services as a violation of the rule of proportionality and a direct attack on civilian objects.
Strategic Implications and Regional Spillover
The threat to Iranian infrastructure does not exist in a vacuum. IHL emphasizes that "violations by one party do not justify reciprocal attacks". However, the strategic reality is that the weaponization of water and power by one side often leads to the same by the other, creating a "cycle of retaliation" that erodes the foundations of civilian life across a whole region.
Retaliatory Threats and GCC Vulnerability
Iran has warned that if its own facilities are hit, it will treat the energy and water infrastructure of the entire Gulf region—including that of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait—as "legitimate targets". This would expand the conflict from a localized war to a regional humanitarian catastrophe.
In early March 2026, Bahrain and Kuwait already reported Iranian strikes on water and electrical plants. The "normalization" of attacking these facilities, as warned by the Geneva Water Hub, would undermine decades of progress in developing IHL to protect civilians in modern conflict.
The Economic Cost of Infrastructure War
The cost of the Gulf conflict has already been estimated to exceed $2 billion daily due to the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz. The destruction of desalination plants would add billions more in reconstruction costs and long-term economic damage. During the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, it took years and billions of dollars to restore the desalination capacity destroyed by Iraqi forces.
Conclusions and Findings on the Legality of the Proposed Attacks
The legality of the threatened attacks on Iran’s electrical and water infrastructure is a complex calculation of IHL principles that largely weighs against the execution of such a campaign as currently articulated.
Attacks on the Iranian electrical grid would be ILLEGAL when:
The primary purpose is to demoralize the population, force political concessions, or serve as a tool of strategic coercion.
The expected incidental harm to civilians—including the failure of hospitals, sewage, and food refrigeration—is excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage gained.
The grid components targeted do not contribute effectively to military action.
Attacks on Iranian water desalination plants would be ILLEGAL when:
The plants serve a civilian population, making them "objects indispensable to survival".
The destruction of the facility would foreseeably cause starvation, dehydration, or the spread of disease among the civilian populace.
The military necessity of disabling a specific plant is not "imperative" and cannot be achieved by other, less harmful means.
Conversely, such attacks would be LEGAL only in highly specific, narrowly defined circumstances:
The facility is being used exclusively for military purposes or to supply "direct support" to military operations, such as a desalination plant serving only an active naval base or a power substation dedicated to a missile battery.
A rigorous proportionality assessment confirms that the tactical gain is substantial and justifies the expected incidental civilian harm, and all feasible precautions—such as using precision "soft-bombs" to disrupt rather than destroy—are taken to minimize that harm.
The "obliteration" of national systems as a means to "force a deal" sits outside the lawful conduct of war. The legal framework of IHL is designed precisely to prevent the weaponization of a population’s survival in the pursuit of strategic goals. Consequently, any orders to execute these threats would likely be met with internal legal challenges and would expose all individuals involved to severe international and domestic criminal liability.
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