Murphy on Substack: Pay Attention When Your President Promises to Commit War Crimes

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) this week published a Substack article sounding the alarm on President Trump's threats to wipe out Iran's civilian energy infrastructure. Blasting Trump's failed war of choice, Murphy warns the president's unhinged call for mass war crimes against the Iranian people is a watershed moment for the United States.

Murphy laid out why Trump's threats are unquestionably war crimes: "Of the many presidential firsts America has witnessed under Trump, this was perhaps the most jarring and diabolical. Am I sure that what he is planning to do if Iran won't open the Strait are war crimes, you ask? Yes. And it's not really a close call. The Geneva Conventions clearly limit bombing to military targets and some dual-use targets (sites used for civilian and military use). But Trump's promise isn't to target power or bridge infrastructure used by the military; he is calling reporters and telling them he is going to destroy EVERY power plant and bridge. That campaign will kill tens of thousands of innocent Iranians who work in the plants and travel on the roads. That's a war crime."

Murphy stressed Trump's strategy of military escalation has only backfired: "[Trump's] entire threat is to purposely terrorize innocent Iranians and hope the regime responds by meeting Trump's demand. It won't. Iran believes it is winning this war. And their immediate reaction to Trump's early morning threat was to step up attacks on its neighbors. In my briefings from Administration intelligence officials, there is no evidence the regime is at risk of falling, and the U.S. attacks instead seem to be hardening Iranian antagonism toward the U.S., just as our strikes in Afghanistan pushed citizens back toward the Taliban."

He ridiculed Trump's fantasy of reopening the Strait of Hormuz by sparking chaos and civil war in Iran: "Trump's advisors told him the entire point of the new bombing campaign would be to terrorize civilians. Why? Because targeting civilian infrastructure would create political turmoil and maybe regime change. If this regime won't reopen the Strait, then maybe after killing thousands of innocent people, a civil war might break out that would lead to this regime's downfall. If this plan seems macabre and insane, it's because…well, IT IS."

Murphy emphasized reopening the Strait of Hormuz is not a victory for the United States: "Even if Trump's war crimes were successful in forcing Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, how on earth is that a victory? The Strait was open before Trump's disastrous war of choice that has spiked gas prices to over four dollars a gallon in the U.S. Did we really spend tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, throw the entire Middle East into chaos, hemorrhage the global energy market, and lose over a dozen American lives, just so we could commit a bunch of heinous war crimes to simply open a waterway that was open before we broke hell loose?"

Likening Trump to Vladimir Putin, Murphy argued we cannot ignore the gravity of an American president threatening to indiscriminately bomb civilians: "I raise the question of Trump's promised war crimes because I worry deeply about our tendency to repeatedly look the other way at his norm-breaking. We do it all the time, and it's never excusable. But on Sunday, he seemed to gain energy the more he bragged about committing war crimes. There was something unusually sinister about how off the rails his threats were, and we have to understand what the consequences are if this week our president proudly starts bombing civilians in Iran, like Putin bombs civilians in Ukraine."

Murphy concluded by calling on Trump's Cabinet to invoke the 25^th Amendment before it's too late: "I wasn't kidding when I responded to Trump's Easter morning tweet that his Cabinet should start researching the 25th Amendment. It is possible he has come unglued in the face of a war he cannot win - a war that could be the world's economic undoing and his political unraveling. The people around him - those that enable him - should stop him from committing these war crimes. And we should speak up loudly to make sure they do."

You can read the full Substack article here.