Commander in Chief

Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House of Representatives will vote this week on legislation to limit President Donald Trump's military actions on Iran in the wake of increased tensions between the two countries after Trump ordered an airstrike killing top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani last Thursday.

In a letter to Democratic members of the House, Pelosi said the "provocative and disproportionate" airstrike on Soleimani "endangered our servicemembers, diplomats and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran."

Soleimani's killing has sparked fears of a broader conflict in the Middle East as tensions between the United States and Iran have escalated.

On Sunday, the Iraqi Parliament voted to expel American soldiers from the country, drawing the threat of sanctions from Trump. Trump also reiterated his threat to target Iranian cultural sites if Iran takes military action against U.S. forces.

The Trump administration has yet to offer any evidence backing its claim that last week’s killing of a senior Iranian official was legal under international law. Now the US president has also threatened to target Iran’s cultural sites – an action experts say would amount to committing a war crime.

President Donald Trump insisted Sunday that Iranian cultural sites were fair game for the US military, dismissing concerns that targeting the country’s heritage would constitute a war crime under international law.

Targeting cultural sites is a war crime under the 1954 Hague Convention. The United Nations Security Council also unanimously passed a resolution in 2017 condemning the destruction of heritage sites, such as that carried out by the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and Syria. At the time, the UN reiterated that actions targeting cultural locations constitute a war crime. US experts have also stressed the illegal nature of the action threatened by the US president.

One former US official expressed skepticism that military planners would agree to target cultural sites. "For what it's worth, I find it hard to believe the Pentagon would provide Trump targeting options that include Iranian cultural sites," Colin Kahl tweeted. "Trump may not care about the laws of war, but DoD [Department of Defense] planners and lawyers do [...] and targeting cultural sites is war crime," Kahl added.