Protecting civilians requires more than protecting individual objects. International law must also account for the systems that make civilian life possible.
By Farzaneh Bani Asad Azad
Farzaneh Bani Asad Azad is a PhD candidate in Political Studies and Third Secretary at
the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations Office and
other international organisations in Geneva.
The Act of Aggression by the United States and Israel against the Islamic Republic of
Iran, which began on 28 February 2026, has exposed a structural weakness in the way
international law often describes civilian harm. The law contains extensive protections
for civilians and civilian objects, yet the legal analysis of an attack can become
artificially fragmented when each school, hospital, power plant, bridge, railway, airport,
pharmaceutical facility or fishing vessel is examined as though it existed in isolation.
Modern civilian life does not function that way. It depends on interconnected systems.
Official Iranian documentation compiled by 8 April recorded 125,630 civilian units as
severely damaged or destroyed, including 100,000 residential and 23,500 commercial
units; 857 schools, 339 health-care centres and 32 universities were reported damaged,
alongside Red Crescent facilities, airports, civilian aircraft and other critical
infrastructure. United Nations special-procedure mandate holders later documented a
substantial part of the broader pattern, including extensive harm to education, health,
scientific research, cultural and religious sites, residential areas, transport, water and
electricity infrastructure, and civilian livelihoods. The figures differ across sources and
dates, but the underlying picture is consistent: the damage was not confined to one sector
of civilian life.
This article advances two related legal arguments. First, the legality and civilian
consequences of attacks on the infrastructure of a modern society cannot always be
adequately assessed by looking only at the physical object struck. Where an attack
disables interconnected systems indispensable to civilian life, reasonably foreseeable
direct and reverberating effects must be taken seriously within the applicable rules of
international humanitarian law. I therefore propose a “Right to Civilian Continuity” not
as a new autonomous right already crystallised in lex lata, but as an interpretative
framework that brings together existing protections under international humanitarian
law, international human rights law and the right to development around a common
protected interest: preserving the minimum material, human, institutional and social
conditions necessary for civilian society to continue functioning during and after armed
conflict.
Second, the same framework has implications for accountability. If the consequences of
an attack must be traced outward—from the object struck to the civilian systems and
human lives that depended upon it—responsibility must also be capable of being traced
upward: from the strike to the operational unit, from execution to approval and order,
and from the order to the decision-maker. In the Iranian case, this inquiry is sharpened
by repeated public statements by President Donald Trump threatening power plants,
bridges, desalination facilities and other infrastructure; his description of returning Iran
to the “Stone Age”; his later acknowledgement of the societal consequences of
destroying Iran’s bridges and power plants; and, in relation to at least one bridge strike,
his statement: “I gave the order.” None of this substitutes for proof of the elements of an
international crime. It does, however, create a serious basis for investigating policy,
knowledge, foreseeability, decision-making and individual criminal responsibility in
relation to specific attacks.
A further distinction is essential. The characterization of the resort to force as an Act of
Aggression is a jus ad bellum question. The legality of each individual strike is a separate
jus in bello question. Even where the resort to force is unlawful, an individual attack
constitutes a war crime only if the relevant elements of the specific offence are
established. The analysis below therefore does not infer the criminality of particular
strikes from the characterization of the wider use of force.
- An Assault on a Society, Not Merely on a Collection of Targets
A defining feature of the Act of Aggression against Iran cannot be understood solely
through the number of strikes carried out. Equally significant is the range of civilian
functions affected from the outset of the attacks.
The residential record also shows that civilian harm unfolded over time rather than in a
single episode. Official Iranian documentation records strikes on residential areas on 13
March in Karaj; 14 March in Eyvan, where six members of one family, including a sixmonth-old infant, were killed; 15 March in Shiraz; 16 March in Narenjestan and
Amirabad in Arak, where a four-day-old infant was among those killed, and in Mahallat
and Tehran; 17 March on Malek-ol-Shoara Bahar Street in Tehran; 19 March in
Majidieh; 20 March in Mehrvila, Karaj; 21 March in Dizaj Amir-Madar, Ramsar and
Dastak; 23 March in Tehran, Tabriz, Qeytariyeh, Velanjak, Khorramabad and Urmia;
24 March in Tabriz; 26 March in Zibashahr, Shiraz; 28 March in Saboonchi; 30 March
in Bandar Abbas and Zanjan; 6 April in Qom; and 7 April in Shahriar and Pardis. These
incidents are not invoked here to presume the unlawfulness of every individual strike.
Their relevance is to the factual scale of disruption and to the need for attack-specific
legal assessment rather than aggregate assertion.
One of the earliest and gravest incidents was the attack of 28 February on Shajareh
Tayebeh Primary School in Minab. Official Iranian figures record the deaths of 168
children between the ages of seven and twelve, both girls and boys. A subsequent
communication by United Nations special procedure mandate holders recorded a lower
figure, but confirmed several essential facts: children were present at the school at the
time of the attack; the mandate holders had received no information indicating that the
school was being used for military purposes; and the school building was separated from
neighbouring facilities by a wall and had its own entrance. The incident was also
identified as requiring an independent investigation into possible serious violations of
international humanitarian law.
The impact on education was not confined to Minab. Official Iranian records document
extensive damage to hundreds of schools and educational facilities across the country.
Higher education was also affected. Several universities sustained damage, including
Shahid Beheshti University, parts of which, together with its research facilities, were
struck on 3 April, and Sharif University of Technology, whose faculties, research
institutes and scientific infrastructure were damaged in the following days. The impact
on universities was not merely structural. At Sharif University, information-technology
infrastructure providing computational and digital services to thousands of academic and
institutional users, as well as knowledge-based enterprises, ceased functioning.
The health system likewise came under sustained pressure. Hospitals, emergency
centres, Red Crescent facilities, ambulances, pharmaceutical facilities and laboratories
sustained damage. On 31 March, facilities belonging to Toufigh Darou Research and
Engineering Company, which produced active pharmaceutical ingredients used in
treatments for cancer, cardiovascular diseases and certain specialised conditions, were
attacked. Facilities of Soha Pharmaceutical Company were also damaged on 1 and 2
April, disrupting parts of its production and packaging lines.
On 2 April, the Pasteur Institute of Iran was also attacked. The Institute, with more than
a century of activity in vaccine production, infectious-disease diagnosis, medical
research and public health, hosted thirteen national reference laboratories, research
centres, biobanks and World Health Organization collaborating centres. The
consequences therefore extended beyond physical damage to buildings and affected part
of the country’s diagnostic, research and disease-surveillance capacity.
At the same time, water and energy networks sustained damage. By late March,
hundreds of incidents affecting electricity transmission and distribution equipment had
been recorded in different parts of Iran, while electricity-sector personnel were killed or
injured. Two power plants with generating capacities of 914 MW and 250 MW were
destroyed in Mobarakeh County. In the water sector, damage to infrastructure in Jask
disrupted drinking-water supplies to 20 villages and more than 10,000 people in one
documented case.
Food production and livelihoods were also affected. Grain-storage facilities, food coldstorage facilities, agricultural infrastructure, livestock and poultry facilities, bottledwater storage and agricultural-fertiliser depots were among the objects damaged. In one
case, a cold-storage facility containing approximately 1,250 tonnes of protein products
at the time of the attack was struck.
Taken together, the damage sustained during this period cannot adequately be described
through isolated categories such as “school”, “hospital”, “factory” or “power plant”.
What came under pressure were multiple essential functions of civilian society
simultaneously. - Attacking Connectivity: Roads, Railways and Civil Aviation
One of the most consequential dimensions of the Act of Aggression against Iran was the
damage inflicted upon the country’s networks of connectivity.
On 2 April, Bridge B1 was attacked. According to the available documentation, thirteen
people were killed and several others injured. A further strike occurred while rescue
personnel were present at the site. On 7 April, attacks on bridges and transport links
intensified. Targets included Bayat Bridge on the Payambar-e Azam Freeway, sections
of the Tehran–Karaj Freeway and Shahid Modarres Bridge, bridges west of Qom, the
Alborz–Zanjan railway bridge, railway lines in Karaj, and the Yahyaabad railway bridge
in Kashan. The strike on the Alborz–Zanjan railway bridge killed one person and injured
eleven others, while other railway attacks also caused casualties.
Ground transportation, however, represented only one part of the picture. Civil aviation
infrastructure was repeatedly attacked.
Official Iranian documentation records attacks on airports and civilian aviation facilities
in several cities. At Kish Airport, the runway, radar equipment and passenger aircraft
sustained damage. Bushehr Airport was attacked and a civilian passenger aircraft was
destroyed. Parts of Kharg Airport were damaged, while several passenger aircraft were
destroyed at Mehrabad Airport.
The chronology of civil-aviation damage is equally important. Official Iranian records
describe strikes on Bam Airport on 25 and 28 March; the radar at Imam Khomeini
International Airport on 25 March; Kermanshah and Tabas airport facilities on 26
March; Mehriz Airport and the control tower and runway at Tabriz Shahid Madani
International Airport on 28 March; and Kashan Airport on 1 and 7 April, including
damage to the passenger waiting hall. On 4 April, the control tower at Kermanshah
Airport was hit and its cabin destroyed. These incidents must be assessed individually,
including the status and use of the relevant facilities at the time of attack, but taken
together they demonstrate the breadth of disruption to civilian connectivity.
Subsequent attacks were recorded against Bandar Abbas and Bandar Lengeh airports,
the control tower and runway at Tabriz Airport, Kashan Airport, the control tower at
Kermanshah Airport, the control tower at Tabas Airport, Bam Airport and its passenger
terminal, Mehriz Airport, and the radar installation at Imam Khomeini International
Airport.
This dimension is particularly relevant to civilian continuity. Airports, bridges and
railways are not merely transport infrastructure; they are channels through which civilian
society remains connected. Patients, doctors, humanitarian personnel, medicines, goods,
students, workers, families and commercial activity depend upon these networks. The
destruction of connectivity may therefore impair civilian services and functions that
have not themselves been directly attacked. - Ports, Fishing Vessels and Livelihoods
In southern Iran, the consequences of the attacks reached directly into the means by
which local communities sustain themselves.
Official documentation records attacks against ports, shipbuilding companies,
commercial vessels and fishing boats. An attack on Bandar Pol pier on 29 March killed
five people and injured four others. On 31 March, an attack on a cargo vessel in the
Ramchah area of Qeshm killed eight people. On 1 April, shipbuilding facilities and local
fishing vessels in Qeshm were attacked, while on the following day warehouses and
facilities at Bahman Port and Doha fishing pier on Qeshm Island sustained damage.
This pattern did not fully end with the ceasefire, whose first day was 8 April. Sporadic
strikes were reported during the ceasefire; hostilities resumed on 8 June and continued
until a Memorandum of Understanding was signed on 14 June. A further wave of attacks
was recorded on 8–9 July.
During attacks on 8 and 9 July, at least 30 fishing vessels at Panj-Pelleh pier in Bandar
Abbas and 10 additional fishing vessels at Banoud pier in Asaluyeh were destroyed or
caught fire, directly affecting the livelihoods of fishing communities dependent upon
those vessels.
During the same period, the Aq-Tappeh-Khan railway bridge in northern Iran was
damaged by a cruise-missile strike. Its significance extended beyond the connection of
two geographic points; the route formed part of Iran’s rail and commercial connectivity
with its northern neighbours and Central Asia.
These incidents demonstrate an important point: even where a ceasefire temporarily
interrupts large-scale hostilities, it does not automatically restore civilian continuity.
Damaged systems require reconstruction, and renewed attacks may interrupt the process
through which society attempts to return to ordinary civilian life. - Sport, Culture and Social Life
Civilian life cannot be reduced to physical survival.
On 28 February in Lamerd, a sports hall and nearby residential buildings were struck.
Available documentation records the deaths of children and adolescents who were
present inside the sports facility. Other sports facilities were also damaged during the
Act of Aggression, including facilities within Tehran’s Azadi Sports Complex and
numerous school sports facilities.
Cultural heritage and public spaces likewise sustained damage. Golestan Palace in
Tehran and historical buildings in several provinces were affected; libraries, museums
and cultural centres were also among the damaged sites. In one case, a library containing
more than 35,000 books was destroyed.
These forms of harm should not be relegated to the margins of the analysis. Education,
sport, culture, social interaction, recreation and participation in public life are
components of a functioning civilian society. A society whose hospitals remain
operational but whose schools, universities, libraries, sports facilities and public spaces
have ceased to function may remain physically alive, but its civilian life has nevertheless
been profoundly impaired. - Bushehr and Risks That Do Not Stop at the Point of Impact
Attacks on nuclear facilities raise distinct legal concerns because their potential
consequences may be long-term and transboundary.
Article 56 of Additional Protocol I of 1977 provides a treaty regime of special protection
for “works and installations containing dangerous forces”, expressly including dams,
dykes and nuclear electrical generating stations, subject to the conditions and exceptions
set out in that provision. The United States is not a party to Additional Protocol I, so
Article 56 should not simply be presented as a treaty obligation binding it as such. The
provision nevertheless identifies the distinctive civilian danger posed by attacks on
nuclear electrical generating stations, while customary international humanitarian law
separately requires particular care where attacks on works or installations containing
dangerous forces may cause severe civilian losses. This special regime should not be
indiscriminately extended to every nuclear facility.
This distinction is particularly relevant to the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant.
Iranian documentation records that the plant’s premises were struck on 17 March and
again on 24 and 27 March. According to preliminary assessments, those three incidents
did not result in technical damage or casualties. On the morning of 4 April, however, a
projectile exploded near the plant’s security perimeter; the blast wave and fragments
damaged an ancillary building and killed a member of the facility’s physical-protection
personnel. The plant’s principal structures remained undamaged and no operational
disruption was reported.
The absence of a radioactive release does not eliminate the legal significance of attacks
against such an installation. The assessment must take account of the risk reasonably
foreseeable at the time the attack was planned or decided upon, rather than relying solely
on the fact that the most serious possible consequence did not ultimately materialise. - From the Protection of Objects to the Protection of Civilian Continuity
International law does not currently recognise an autonomous right entitled the Right to
Civilian Continuity. To claim otherwise would go beyond the present state of lex lata.
The constituent elements of the concept, however, are already protected under
international law.
International humanitarian law protects civilians and civilian objects, restricts attacks to
military objectives, prohibits disproportionate attacks and requires feasible precautions
to avoid or minimise civilian harm. Special protections also exist for medical units and
personnel, objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, and certain
works and installations containing dangerous forces.
International human rights law, in parallel, protects the rights to life, health, water, food,
housing, education and other conditions essential to human existence. The right to
development adds another dimension by placing the human person at the centre of the
development process and protecting participation in, contribution to and enjoyment of
development.
The concept of civilian continuity does not create these protections; it brings them into
analytical relationship with one another.
In contemporary societies, a hospital does not operate independently of electricity and
water networks; a pharmaceutical factory does not function independently of
laboratories and transportation; a school is not independent of families, teachers and safe
access routes; and food production depends upon energy, storage and transport.
For the purposes of this article, civilian continuity may therefore be defined as:
the preservation of the minimum material, human, institutional and social conditions
necessary for a civilian population to continue its individual and collective life during
and after armed conflict, including access to health care, water, food, housing, education,
mobility, communications, livelihoods and other fundamental functions of civilian
society.
This is proposed as an interpretative legal framework, not as a declaration that a new
rule of international law has already crystallised.
Its principal contribution lies in shifting the unit of analysis from the object to its
function, and from the function to its human consequences. - Reverberating Effects and Foreseeability
This shift in perspective has direct implications for the application of the principles of
proportionality and precautions in attack.
The harm caused by an attack on a power plant is not necessarily confined to physical
damage to the plant and its equipment. If the resulting electricity outage disables water
pumps, hospital equipment, pharmaceutical or food cold-storage facilities,
communications systems or productive capacity, those consequences are real for the
civilian population.
Such consequences are commonly described as reverberating effects.
Where these effects are reasonably foreseeable at the time an attack is planned or decided
upon, they cannot simply be excluded from the legal assessment because they
materialise hours or days after the initial strike.
Foreseeability is not static. Extensive experience from urban warfare, advanced
intelligence and surveillance capabilities, geospatial data, infrastructure-network
modelling and collateral-damage estimation methodologies have increased the ability of
modern armed forces to understand the civilian environment in which attacks are
conducted. As the capacity to identify systemic consequences increases, claims that
known and foreseeable civilian effects could not reasonably have been anticipated
require correspondingly closer scrutiny.
The legal assessment of an attack against infrastructure should therefore examine not
only the nature of the object concerned, but also which civilian function would be lost,
which other systems depended upon it, and to what extent the resulting harm was
reasonably foreseeable to those who planned, approved or ordered the attack. - Destruction Has a Second Price: Reconstruction and the Loss of Future
Development
The consequences of infrastructure destruction do not end when an essential service is
restored. Destruction imposes a second, less visible cost: resources that would otherwise
have financed future development must be diverted to reconstruct what already existed.
A bridge that must be rebuilt, a university whose laboratories must be reconstructed, a
damaged hospital, power plant, water network, airport or pharmaceutical facility does
not represent only the loss of an existing asset. Reconstruction consumes financial,
technical and human resources that could otherwise have expanded health care,
education, housing, scientific research, employment, transport or new infrastructure.
This opportunity cost gives infrastructure destruction an inherently developmental
dimension. Conflict can therefore generate three temporally distinct forms of loss: it
destroys accumulated investment from the past; it disrupts civilian life in the present;
and it may absorb resources otherwise available for future development. A society
emerging from conflict may be compelled to spend years restoring yesterday’s capacity
instead of building tomorrow’s.
The right to development is relevant to this dimension because development is not
simply a stock of physical assets. It is a continuing process directed towards improving
the well-being of the population and enabling participation in economic, social, cultural
and political life. Large-scale destruction of civilian and developmental infrastructure
can impair that process twice: first, by destroying accumulated development gains; and
second, by redirecting future public and private resources towards reconstruction. The
legal consequences of particular reconstruction costs, including questions of causation,
remoteness and reparation, require separate analysis. But as a matter of assessing civilian
harm and the developmental consequences of armed conflict, the opportunity cost cannot
be ignored. This developmental opportunity cost should not be confused with an
automatic head of legally recoverable damage: any claim for reparation would still
require a demonstrated causal nexus, legal attribution and an applicable remedial
framework.
The destruction of civilian infrastructure therefore has a temporal dimension: it destroys
past investment, disrupts present civilian life, and may consume resources otherwise
available for future development. - The “Stone Age”: When Infrastructure Destruction Becomes an Articulated Policy
In the Iranian case, foreseeability arises not only from the objective characteristics of the
infrastructure involved. Public statements by the President of the United States directly
addressed both infrastructure and the consequences of its destruction.
On 1 April, President Trump stated in an official address concerning military operations
against Iran that the United States would conduct heavier attacks in the weeks ahead and
spoke of returning Iran to the “Stone Ages.”
On 5 April, he publicly described 7 April as “Power Plant Day and Bridge Day.”
The temporal connection is important. Trump’s 5 April statement did not refer to bridges
in the abstract: it identified Tuesday, 7 April, in advance as “Power Plant Day and Bridge
Day.” On 7 April, official Iranian documentation records a concentrated series of attacks
against precisely this category of infrastructure. The Bayat Bridge on the Payambar-e
Azam Freeway was struck; the Tehran–Karaj Freeway was attacked near Hemmat
Highway and the Shahid Modarres Bridge sustained damage; ground-transport bridges
in western Qom were hit; and, at midday, the Alborz–Zanjan railway bridge at
Chaharbagh was struck, killing one person and injuring eleven. The same day, railway
tracks in Karaj and the Yahya-Abad railway bridge in Kashan were also attacked, with
two civilians killed and three injured. The sequence therefore matters evidentially: a
specific category of civilian-connected infrastructure was publicly identified by the
President for attack on a specified date, and multiple objects within that category were
in fact attacked on that date. This temporal correspondence does not by itself establish
the legal status of each target, the identity of the force responsible for every strike, or
the President’s personal order for each individual attack. It does, however, strengthen
the basis for investigating whether the 7 April strikes formed part of a targeting policy
articulated at the highest political level and, if so, how that policy was translated into
target selection and operational orders.
His remarks on 6 April were of even greater significance.
A journalist asked whether, in light of his statements concerning bridges and power
plants, civilian targets such as schools and hospitals would remain off limits. President
Trump replied:
“Very little is off limits.”
He then described a plan under which all of Iran’s bridges could be destroyed by the
following evening and all of its power plants disabled within hours, again stating that
after the expiry of the deadline Iran would have neither bridges nor power plants and
would be reduced to the “Stone Ages.”
These statements are legally significant. A political or strategic objective of reducing a
society to a state of infrastructural collapse cannot, by itself, transform a civilian object
into a lawful military objective. The legal status of each bridge, power plant, hospital or
other installation must be assessed independently under the applicable rules of
international humanitarian law.
The most significant part of the 6 April press conference, however, concerned a separate
evidentiary link: a bridge strike that President Trump personally attributed to his own
order. He did not identify the bridge by name in that statement, and this article therefore
does not infer its identity from the available public record. What matters for present
purposes is the President’s account of the decision itself.
“I gave the order to knock out their biggest bridge.”
He then repeated:
“I gave the order.”
According to his own account, the bridge was destroyed within ten minutes of the order.
Read together with the 5 April advance designation of 7 April as “Bridge Day” and the
documented attacks on multiple bridges and rail links on 7 April, the statement supplies
a concrete reason to reconstruct the attack-specific chain of decision: which bridge he
ordered struck, what targeting information was presented to him, who transmitted and
approved the order, which unit executed it, and what assessment was made of civilian
use, expected military advantage, incidental harm and feasible precautions.
This statement is of considerable evidentiary significance.
With respect to at least one attack, the connection between the highest political authority
of the United States and the issuance of an operational order is not based solely on
inference from the formal chain of command. The President publicly attributed the order
to himself.
That fact does not, by itself, establish that the attack constituted a war crime. The legal
status of the bridge, any alleged military use, the concrete and direct military advantage
anticipated, reasonably foreseeable civilian harm, proportionality, precautions taken and
the requisite mental element must all be independently assessed.
Nevertheless, one significant link in the evidentiary chain is present:
the order. - Knowledge of the Consequences: “91 Million People Without Power and Without
Bridges”
Subsequent statements by the President further increase the evidentiary relevance of
these remarks.
On 28 July, the White House published excerpts from President Trump’s interview with
Fox & Friends. During the interview, he stated that the United States could destroy most
of Iran’s bridges in less than an hour and all of the country’s power plants within a day.
He then himself described the human consequence of such a scenario: approximately 91
million people would be left without power and without bridges.
He further remarked that people “have to live” and characterised the matter as a “very
delicate balance.”
These statements do not, standing alone, establish the mens rea required for any
particular war crime. They are, however, directly relevant to an assessment of
knowledge of civilian consequences, foreseeability of harm, and the existence and nature
of any targeting policy.
Where the principal political decision-maker himself articulates the consequences of
destroying energy and transportation networks in terms affecting tens of millions of
civilians, his awareness of the relationship between infrastructure destruction and
widespread disruption of civilian life becomes a matter that any serious legal
investigation must examine. - From a Presidential Order to Individual Criminal Responsibility
Official capacity and individual responsibility are distinct legal questions.
Conduct undertaken by a President in an official capacity may be attributable to the State
and may engage the international responsibility of that State. At the same time, where
an individual satisfies the relevant legal requirements for participation in an international
crime, official status does not in itself eliminate the personal character of that conduct.
Crucially, however, an order to attack is not necessarily an order to commit a war crime.
Individual criminal responsibility requires an attack-specific assessment of the legal
status of the target, the information available to the decision-maker, anticipated civilian
harm, precautions taken, the individual’s role in selecting, approving or ordering the
target, and the applicable mental element.
Accordingly, the evidentiary chain in the Iranian case must extend beyond public policy
statements:
articulated policy → targeting intelligence → target development and nomination →
civilian-harm assessment → approval → order → transmission → execution → resulting
harm.
With regard to the bridge referred to by President Trump, one of the upper links in that
chain is visible in his own public statements. The precise identification of the bridge,
correlation of the stated order with operational data and examination of the underlying
targeting process are central to any further assessment of individual responsibility. - The ICC Precedent: Attacks on Ukraine’s Electricity Infrastructure
The practice of the International Criminal Court concerning attacks on Ukraine’s
electricity infrastructure provides a useful comparative example of how individual
criminal responsibility may be examined in relation to attacks on civilian infrastructure.
In March 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Sergei Kobylash, then Commander of
the Long-Range Aviation of the Russian Aerospace Force, and Viktor Sokolov, then
Commander of the Black Sea Fleet. The Court found reasonable grounds to believe that
they bore responsibility, inter alia, for the war crime of directing attacks against civilian
objects and for attacks causing excessive incidental civilian harm.
In June 2024, arrest warrants were also issued for Sergei Shoigu, then Minister of
Defence of the Russian Federation, and Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of
the Russian Armed Forces, in connection with the broader campaign of attacks against
Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure.
These proceedings do not determine the legal character of any attack in Iran, nor the
responsibility of any individual in relation to such attacks. Their relevance here is
methodological:
where the evidence supports it, an investigation into attacks on civilian infrastructure
may extend from operational execution to higher levels of command and decisionmaking. At each level, responsibility must be established on the basis of the individual’s
own conduct, contribution and the required mental element. - From Documentation of Damage to an Architecture of Accountability
The concept of civilian continuity would have limited value if it remained solely
theoretical.
Its principal significance lies in its potential to reshape the methodology of
documentation and legal investigation.
In the case of an attack on a power plant, it is not sufficient to record the coordinates of
the installation, the weapon used and the physical damage sustained. An investigation
should establish which population the facility served, which hospitals and water systems
depended upon it, what backup systems existed, how long the disruption lasted, and what
information the attacker possessed — or could reasonably have obtained through
feasible precautions — concerning those dependencies.
The same approach applies to bridges. Their role in civilian transportation, the
availability of alternative routes, the movement of ambulances and essential goods, the
dependency of surrounding communities, and the consequences of their destruction for
connectivity and livelihoods should form part of the evidentiary record.
Accordingly, two chains must be reconstructed simultaneously.
On one side:
attack → loss of civilian function → direct and reverberating effects → human
consequences.
On the other:
policy → information → target selection → civilian-harm assessment → approval →
order → execution.
Responsibility becomes susceptible to rigorous legal assessment when these two chains
can be connected, in relation to a particular attack, through evidence capable of judicial
scrutiny.
Conclusion: International Law Should Follow the Evidence Upwards
The Iranian case exposes a blind spot in international law not because the law lacks rules
protecting civilians, but because those rules can be applied too narrowly when the object
struck is treated as the end of the analysis. A school is not protected merely for its walls;
its significance lies in the children’s ability to learn. A hospital is not protected for its
building alone; patients depend on the system of electricity, water, medicines, personnel
and access that allows it to function. A power plant is not only turbines and transformers;
hospitals, water systems, homes, communications and production may depend upon it.
A bridge is not only concrete and steel; it carries people, food, medicines, emergency
services and economic life. A fishing vessel may be the economic survival of a family.
The proposed Right to Civilian Continuity gives a name to this systemic dimension
without pretending to create a new autonomous rule of lex lata. Its function is
interpretative: to read the existing protections of international humanitarian law, human
rights law and the right to development in light of the interconnected conditions that
make civilian life possible. It also introduces a temporal perspective. Infrastructure
destruction can erase past investment, interrupt present civilian life and divert future
development resources into reconstruction.
That framework matters equally for accountability. International law should follow two
evidentiary chains. The first runs outward from the strike: object, lost civilian function,
reverberating effects and human consequence. The second runs upward from the strike:
operational execution, targeting process, approval, order and decision-maker. Neither
chain can be replaced by rhetoric. Both must be reconstructed through evidence, attack
by attack.
In the Iranian case, the publicly available record already contains significant elements
of both chains. There is documented destruction across systems sustaining civilian life.
There are repeated presidential threats against power plants, bridges, desalination
facilities and other infrastructure. There are statements indicating awareness of the
societal consequences of destroying those systems—including President Trump’s later
reference to approximately 91 million people “without power, without bridges.” There
is an official CENTCOM record stating that Operation Epic Fury commenced at the
direction of the President of the United States. And, in relation to at least one bridge
attack, there is the President’s own public statement: “I gave the order.”
The chronology is therefore not merely background. On 5 April, bridges and power
plants were publicly designated for attack on 7 April; on 6 April, the President described
both the capacity to destroy Iran’s bridge and power networks and his personal issuance
of an order for a bridge strike; and on 7 April, multiple bridges, railway bridges and
transport links were struck. The legal task is to test, attack by attack, whether and how
those public statements corresponded to operational targeting decisions.
These facts do not amount to a criminal conviction. They do not establish that every
threatened object was civilian, that every strike was unlawful, or that an acknowledged
order concerning one bridge can be extrapolated to every attack in the campaign.
International criminal law requires more. For each attack, the status of the target, the
concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, expected civilian harm, reasonably
foreseeable reverberating effects, precautions taken, information available to the
decision-maker, the applicable mental element and the individual mode of responsibility
must be established.
But those requirements are reasons to investigate, not reasons to stop the inquiry. Where
the categories of infrastructure publicly threatened correspond to categories
subsequently attacked; where the consequences of their destruction were themselves
publicly articulated; and where the political decision-maker acknowledges issuing an
order for a specific strike, the evidentiary trail is sufficiently serious to justify
investigation into whether particular decisions crossed the line from the conduct of
hostilities into individual criminal responsibility.
The ICC’s Ukraine infrastructure cases illustrate this methodological point. The Court’s
investigation into an alleged campaign against electric-power infrastructure did not stop
with those closest to operational execution; subject to the evidence, arrest warrants
extended to operational commanders and senior defence leadership, including
allegations of ordering and failures of command responsibility. The Ukraine warrants
do not determine the legal character of any strike in Iran. They nevertheless demonstrate
that international criminal analysis can follow an infrastructure campaign upward
through a decision-making structure when the evidence supports doing so.
The central proposition is therefore simple. International law should not stop at the
crater. It should ask what civilian system depended upon the object destroyed, what
consequences were known or reasonably foreseeable, who selected or approved the
target, who issued the order, and on what legal basis. The ultimate object of protection
is not infrastructure as such. It is the possibility of civilian life continuing through war.
And where credible evidence leads from the destruction of that possibility to the highest
level of political decision-making, accountability must be capable of following the same
path.