Attacking Iran's Power Plants Would Be Despicable

Threatening to damage or destroy power generation for the entire country is outrageous.

The president threatened Iran with more attacks on their civilian infrastructure today:

U.S. ​President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to "obliterate" Iran's power plants if Tehran does not fully reopen the Strait ‌of Hormuz within 48 hours, a dramatic escalation that came barely a day after he talked about "winding down" the war.

Threatening to damage or destroy power generation for the entire country is outrageous. If the U.S. does this, it will be inflicting collective punishment on the civilian population on a massive scale. Attacking Iran’s power plants would be comparable to Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power grid, and it would be just as despicable.

The president’s threat comes on the heels of the Israeli attack on the South Pars natural gas field, which provoked significant Iranian strikes against energy infrastructure in neighboring countries. Targeting Iran’s power plants is practically guaranteed to cause further Iranian attacks on the energy infrastructure of Gulf states. The civilian populations of Iran and its neighbors will be the ones to suffer most as a result of these attacks.

The U.S. should not be threatening Iran’s civilian infrastructure, and it is not going to get the desired result. It is extremely unlikely that Trump’s threats, unhinged as they are, will convince the Iranian government to let normal commerce resume through the strait. The fact that Trump is making such a reckless threat signals that he is desperate and flailing.

Now that the president has publicly made this threat, he has painted himself into a corner. Hardliners in his administration and in Congress will insist that he follow through on his insane threat. The president has tended to yield to pressure from hardliners when it comes to anything to do with Iran. The hardliners have led him and the U.S. into a disaster. He ought to stop listening to Iran hawks, but it hasn’t happened in ten years and it isn’t likely to start now.

The president’s latest threat shows once again that he falls back on escalation whenever he doesn’t get his way. Each time that Iran refuses to give in to his demands, he issues extreme ultimatums and says that he will deal out more death and destruction if they do not submit. Trump expects Iran to become a vassal, and he will mete out increasingly severe punishments until they do. He has horribly miscalculated in starting this fight with Iran, because they will never agree to become what he wants.

If he carries out the threat to strike the power plants, he will be committing another crime against the Iranian people. Hawks frequently defend their military interventions by pretending that they are attacking to “help” the people, but these interventions typically make conditions in the country far worse and cause the people even more hardship and deprivation. In this case, the president is signaling his intention to wreck the country and make life even more miserable for more than ninety million people.

Attacking Iranian power plants is nothing less than an assault on the health and safety of the Iranian people. If the U.S. does this, the war will likely escalate further and it will be that much harder to bring to an end.