Trump’s top general promises ‘we always strike lawful targets’ after president threatens Iran’s water supply

Donald Trump’s top military adviser is refusing to offer a legal justification for the president’s threatened attack against Iran’s water desalinization plants while insisting that the U.S. would only “strike lawful targets” after a careful review of multiple considerations.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine did not directly answer the question when asked specifically about the legality of such a raid on the plants that provide drinking water to most of Iran’s 90 million residents. Instead, he told reporters at a Pentagon briefing on Tuesday that the U.S. “joint force” — the combination of the America’s Army, Navy, Air and Space Forces and Marine Corps — is “the most professional force in the world.”

“We have numerous processes and system to carefully consider the whole range of considerations, from civilian risk to legal considerations,” said Caine, who stressed that the Pentagon reviews “any target” through the same review process used for any Prompt Global Strike mission, a Defense Department term that refers to any missile or bombing attack that does not rely on forward-deployed forces.

“With any target and as targets come before us, we run them through the same process that we always do and always strike lawful targets,” Caine added.

The top U.S. general’s comments came less than a day after the White House’s top spokesperson stood by Trump’s threat to cripple the desalination infrastructure that supplies Iran’s population with drinking water and downplayed the possibility that bombing such civilian targets would constitute war crimes under both American criminal law and international treaties to which the U.S. is a party.

On Monday, Trump lashed out on Truth Social with a post warning that American forces could attack critical parts of Tehran’s civilian infrastructure if Iran’s current government did not reach a deal with the administration and allow the Strait of Hormuz to be “immediately ‘Open for Business’” by halting threats to commercial shipping through the key maritime chokepoint.

“If for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched,’” the president said.

He added that any such attacks would be “retribution for our many soldiers, and others, that Iran has butchered and killed over the old Regime’s 47-year ‘Reign of Terror.’”

The president’s extraordinary threat to attack Iran’s power and water systems — attacks that would almost certainly violate the Fourth Geneva Convention’s prohibitions against targeting civilian infrastructure necessary for a population’s survival.

But Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed questions about the legality of targeting Iran’s fresh water supply and claimed the U.S. would “always act within the confines of the law.”

She also said Trump would “move forward unabated” and “expects the Iranian regime to make a deal.”

American criminal law prohibits the commission of war crimes, which it defines as “a grave breach in any of the international conventions signed at Geneva 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party.”

The U.S. criminal code states that any person who commits war crimes can be imprisoned for life or put to death if a war crime results in the death of any victims.