Human rights groups have condemned US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s statement that he would not give Iran “any quarter” as the US and Israel continue their military campaign against Iran.
“We will keep pushing. We will keep pushing and keep moving forward. The enemy will have no mercy and no mercy,” Hegseth told reporters on Friday.
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Under the Hague Convention and other international treaties, it is illegal to threaten to not give quarters.
Domestic laws, such as the War Crimes Act of 1996, also prohibit such policies. A US military manual similarly warns that threats of “no quarter” are illegal.
Brian Finucane, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group think tank, said Mr Hegseth’s comments appeared to violate those standards.
“These comments are very impressive,” Finucane told Al Jazeera by phone. “The question arises whether this bellicose and lawless rhetoric is reflected in the way the war is conducted on the battlefield.”
But Mr Hegseth publicly dismissed concerns about international law, insisting he would not abide by “stupid rules of engagement” or “politically correct wars”.
His comments raised concerns among some experts that measures to prevent harm to civilians were being ignored in favor of a “maximum lethality” campaign.
Hegseth’s comments also come in the wake of a U.S. attack on a girls’ school in southern Iran that left more than 170 people dead, most of them children. The war has left at least 1,444 Iranians dead and millions more displaced.
“Inhumane and counterproductive”
The ban on “no quarter” declarations dates back more than a century and was part of an effort to impose limits on actions during wartime.
The Nuremberg trials after World War II upheld that legal standard, as high-ranking Nazi officials were indicted for refusing to provide benefits to enemy forces in some cases.
“The basic idea is that it is inhumane and counterproductive to execute people who have laid down their weapons,” Finucane said.
He added that “the mere announcement” of a “no quarter” by government officials could itself be a war crime.
The United States and Israel already face charges of violating international law during their war with Iran. Experts condemned the first attack on February 28 as “unprovoked” and characterized the conflict as an illegal war of aggression.
Iranian authorities also protested the sinking of the warship Iris Dena off the coast of Sri Lanka by a US submarine as it returned from ceremonial naval exercises in India. At least 84 people were killed in the attack.
The warship is considered a legitimate military target, but Iran says it was not fully armed, raising questions about whether it could have been stopped rather than sunk.
The U.S. military is also said to have refused to cooperate in rescuing the Dena’s crew, even though the Geneva Convention primarily requires aid for shipwrecks. The Sri Lankan Navy eventually helped recover survivors from the wreckage.
In response to the attack, Hegseth described the ship’s sinking as a “silent death”. “We are fighting to win,” he told reporters.
US President Donald Trump himself said he asked why the ship sank without being captured.
“One of the generals said, ‘Sir, it’s a lot more fun to do it this way,'” Trump said.
“Major red flag”
For decades, the U.S. military has faced criticism for killing civilians in military operations.
This includes during the so-called Global War on Terror, when airstrikes killed thousands of civilians, such as the 2008 attack on a wedding party in Afghanistan.
Even before the war with Iran, the Trump administration faced accusations that it violated international law by attacking suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean.
At least 157 people have been killed in these attacks since they began on September 2.
However, the Trump administration never identified the victims or presented evidence against them. Scholars have condemned the attack as an extrajudicial killing operation.
Analysts say the Pentagon’s policy of emphasizing lethality at the expense of human rights concerns carried over into the war against Iran.
“Death and destruction rains from the sky all day long. We continue to fight. Our warfighters have the fullest authority personally given to them by the president, and that is exactly his authority,” Hegseth said at a press conference on March 4.
“Our rules of engagement are bold and precise, designed to unleash American power rather than constrain it.”
Sarah Yeager, Washington director at Human Rights Watch, said this rhetoric is concerning.
“I’ve been involved with the U.S. military for 20 years, and this quote struck me. Senior leadership rhetoric is important because it helps shape the command environment in which the U.S. military operates,” Yeager said.
“From an atrocity prevention perspective, language that ignores legal constraints is a serious red flag.”
The impact of Mr. Hegseth’s rhetoric on combat operations is unclear, but a recent report by the watchdog group Air Wars found that the pace of attacks on Iran by the United States and Israel far outpaces any other military operation in modern history.
According to the report, the US dropped nearly $5.6 billion worth of ammunition in the first two days of the war alone. According to Air Wars, the US and Israel achieved more targets in the first 100 hours of the Iran war than in the first six months of the US campaign against Islamic State (ISIS).
Following Hegseth’s comments on Friday, Sen. Jeff Merkley slammed the Pentagon chief as a “dangerous amateur.” He cited attacks on girls’ schools in Iran as an example of the consequences.
“His ‘no hesitation’ rules of engagement set the stage for a failure to differentiate between civilian schools and military targets,” Merkley wrote in a social media post.
“As a result, more than 150 schoolgirls and teachers were killed by American missiles.”
