(On the Occasion of American Human Rights Week)

American Human Rights Week, initiated by the late Leader of the Islamic Revolution in 2015 with the aim of exposing and revisiting “human rights violations by the United States,” provides a valuable opportunity to review the three dimensions of human rights violations, humanitarian law violations, and environmental human rights violations by the White House during the 40-day war of 2025 (1404 Persian calendar).

During this war, the world witnessed violations of fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, foremost among them the principle of distinction—that is, the principle of differentiating between military and non-military targets. Under the principle of distinction, parties to a conflict are obligated to constantly distinguish between the civilian population and combatants, and between non-military areas and military objectives, as attacks on non-military targets are explicitly prohibited under the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols. Moreover, “intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects” is recognized as a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Despite this, the attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab in the early hours of the war on February 28, 2026, resulting in the martyrdom of 168 students—despite the clearly civilian nature of this educational center—stands as one of the most brutal attacks on civilians. It recalls the U.S. Navy’s Vincennes shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane on July 3, 1988, which martyred 290 innocent passengers and crew, including 66 children—itself one of the reasons for designating July 7–۱۲ as American Human Rights Week at the initiative of the late Leader of the Islamic Revolution in 2015. However, the violation of the principle of distinction was not limited to the Minab school. Throughout the 40-day war, U.S. forces repeatedly attacked non-military areas, as seen in the attack on the Lamerd sports hall on the very first day of the war, which resulted in the martyrdom of 21 civilians, including 3 children, and the injury of 110 others.

During the 40-day war, thousands of residential homes were targeted, along with vital infrastructure including hospitals, universities, educational centers, railways, bridges, markets, mosques, and even a Jewish synagogue and an Armenian cultural club, refineries, power plants, petrochemical infrastructure, factories, water desalination plants, relief centers, fuel depots, water sources, urban infrastructure, banks and financial centers, and historical and cultural heritage sites—all of which were intentionally targeted by the United States and the Israeli regime, constituting violations of fundamental principles of international humanitarian law: distinction, proportionality, and precaution. None of these infrastructures were military targets, nor did they function or contribute in any way to military operations.

While the principle of precaution requires that parties to a conflict take all feasible precautions in the choice of means and methods of warfare to avoid civilian casualties, the United States, in its attack on the Karaj Bridge B1, not only blatantly violated the principle of distinction between military and non-military infrastructure but also, by violating the principle of precaution, chose the exact day and hour (the Persian New Year’s Nature Day, April 2, 2026) to maximize civilian casualties. The U.S. employed this same approach by using prohibited and non-discriminatory weapons, particularly through the use of four PrSM short-range ballistic missiles in Lamerd, Shiraz. According to reports, these missiles, used for the first time in Lamerd, each fragmented into over 180,000 tungsten fragments before impact, unleashing a rain of 720,000 deadly fragments upon civilians in Lamerd.

This U.S. approach was deliberate and aimed at killing civilians and obliterating and disintegrating Iran. It was for this reason that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth openly dismissed international humanitarian law rules as “stupid rules that get in the way of victory.” In line with this belief, according to a Pentagon report published in May 2026, “not only were none of the 11 primary objectives of the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP) achieved, but funding for critical tools, including the civilian harm tracking database, was reduced, and oversight committee meetings were canceled.” This report confirms that U.S. officials during the 40-day war acted deliberately and with specific intent, with “criminal indifference” toward civilian lives. This paralleled Trump’s threat to completely destroy Iranian civilization and his indirect threat of a nuclear attack—which amounted to acknowledgment of planning to commit the ultimate crime of genocide against the Iranian people. Meanwhile, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, on March 13, 2026, violating the fundamental principle of quarter, declared that “no quarter will be given to our enemies.” This term in international humanitarian law refers to refusing to accept the surrender of an enemy and killing surrendered or wounded combatants.

As 126 international jurists stated in an open letter dated April 2, 2026, this action constitutes a “clear violation of Article 40 of Additional Protocol I of 1977” and constitutes a “war crime.” The result of these blatant violations of international humanitarian law by the United States and the Israeli regime, and the use of prohibited weapons, was the martyrdom of over a thousand people and the wounding of over thirty thousand during the 40-day war. Furthermore, by attacking oil depots in Tehran, Karaj, and Shahr-e-Rey during the 12-day and 40-day wars, the United States and the Israeli regime created “black rain,” blatantly violating “environmental human rights” and the human right to clean air and water for Iranian citizens.

The U.S. approach during the 40-day war demonstrated that the United States, in addition to its opposition to international human rights law—as evidenced by its withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council (2018) and its refusal to submit its national human rights performance report to the Universal Periodic Review session of the Human Rights Council in November 2025—also disregards international humanitarian law, regarding it as “stupid rules.” This reflects the legal and moral decline of a United States that claims to champion democracy and human rights, alongside its political and economic decline.

Documented evidence and reports from reputable international bodies, including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the open letter signed by 126 international jurists, confirm that the 40-day war waged by the United States and the Israeli regime against Iran constitutes multiple instances of war crimes and gross violations of human rights, humanitarian law, and environmental human rights. Given that the United States is a party to the Geneva Conventions (1949) and their Additional Protocols, these actions could be subject to prosecution in international courts, including the International Criminal Court (ICC)—though subject to certain conditions and considerations. While the U.S. is not a party to the Rome Statute, under customary international law and the principle of “universal jurisdiction,” states and international bodies can file complaints regarding these crimes and, through diplomatic and legal mechanisms, lay the groundwork for prosecuting responsible officials, including the commanders and perpetrators of these international crimes.