U.S.–Israeli War on Iran: Civilian Strikes, Assassinations, and the Risk of Wider War ___ An Interview With Dave Lindorff

As the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran unfolds, a series of controversial military actions—from strikes launched during diplomatic negotiations to attacks on civilian sites and the targeting of political leaders—has raised urgent questions about legality, strategy, and the human cost of the conflict.

In this interview, award-winning investigative journalist David Lindorff examines the opening phase of the war, arguing that recent events could mark a historic turning point with far-reaching consequences for international law, regional stability, and the future of U.S. policy in the Middle East.

1- How should launching an attack in the middle of diplomatic talks be viewed?

As I wrote in a recent article on my Substack site ThisCantBehsappening!, When Japan launched a devastating surprise attack on the US Navy’s Pacific Naval Fleet moored at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, while its emissaries were still negotiating for a peace between the two countries, President Roosevelt, in announcing the attack on the radio to the nation the next day and the decision to declare war on Japan and its allies, Germany and Italy, famously called such treachery “A date that will live in infamy.” (In fairness to Japan, many wars have begun with a surprise attack in modern times, beginning in US history with the Confederate States of America’s attack on the US Fort Sumter that guarded and controlled shipping into and out of Charleston harbor in South Carolina, and including the US 10-day carpet bombing of North Vietnam, the surprise dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan, which, while done in the midst of ban ongoing war with Japan, were an exceptional use of two weapons of hitherto unknown awesome power and with lasting impact, both of which were dropped art a time to catch the maximum number of Japanese people — mostly civilians —outside and unprotected from the blasts and radiation pulse, and most recently, before the current assault on Iran, the invasion and shock-and-awe bombing of Venezuela.
Given that the US was planning its surprise attack on Iran way back in early November, even as it was negotiating with Iran for a new nuclear enrichment ban and which the Omani prime minister, mediating the negotiations, said last the night before the war was launched was a day or two away from being agreed to, another Day of Infamy should be added to the calendar, this time for \ Trump and the US.

2- How should bombing a girls’ school in the very first minutes of a war be judged?

Investigators from the US government and from the Reuters news agency in the US are saying it’s it is becoming increasingly clear that the horrific strike on a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran right at the outset of the US-Israeli war on Iran. It was a strike which killed 168 people, mostly young children, was the work of the US military. Early claims that it might have been an errant Iranian missile or an Israeli attack have been ruled out and a building used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was some third of a mile away from the school—pretty distant to try and portray hitting the school as a targeting error.

Making ther attack worse, witnesses say there were two sequential strikes on the school, viewed as a “double tap” in US military slang, meant to kill not just the initial victims, but any family members or emergency rescuers rushing to help survivors (the “Double tap, also US military slang for “finishing off a wounded enemy with a kill shot to the chest or head) both tactic are warcrimes ands are known to be practiced by US troops in battle and are rarely prosecuted. You would not know the US just engaged in a massive potential war crime of destroying an entire school of little girls based upon the US government ’s and the Pentagon’s continuing silence about the incident.

I suspect silence this is evidence of guilt, since if the US thought it wasn’t responsible, both the Pentagon and White House would be condemning the crime. (Schools are specifically protected from attack under the Geneva Conventions, though Israel and the US have violated that ban repeatedly in Gaza, in Vietnam, Iraq and in other wars,

3-Is targeting political officials acceptable, given that it violates international law?

The deliberate targeting and killing of a national leader, or group of leaders in war time can be considered a serious war crime if those killed are not actively involved in the conduct of that war. Whether Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—whose assassination in his official government office compound along with a daughter and grand-daughter (apparently by an Israeli-fired Blue Sparrow space-launched missile), was being boasted about by US leaders who bragged about how they were able to “

track his every move,” making the attack possible—is a war crime would depend on whether Khamenei was directly involved in the conduct of Iran’s response to the US/Israeli assault on Iran.
There is less question about the subsequent slaughter by bomb or rocket of a large number of Iranian leaders who were reportedly gathering to select elect a new Supreme lLeader to replace Khamenei. As many of those killed had no actual role running the war, their deaths could well be war crimes objectively.

Since such a high-level killing surely had to have been ordered by Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump and internationally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, any prosecution for the killing would have to be pursued against them, which seems highly unlikely. (Technically Trump as Commander in Chief could be impeached for a war crime war crime, but as conviction would require a two thirds vote in the Senate, that seems highly unlikely.)
What seems to me clear however, is that the killing Khamenei and other subordinate Iranian leaders, civilian and military was incredibly stupid. As Trump admitted when questioned by reporters in a press conference following a meeting with German Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz, he doesn’t have anyone currently to negotiate with in Iran or to even attempt to assume a governing role in Iran “because we’ve killed them all.”

This appalling admission by the president shows an incredible callousness and indifference to all the suffering and death underway in the Middle East, Back in th 19th Century and earlier, there was an understanding among warring armies, who were fighting their wars not from the air and at long range but in close quarters and even hand-to-hand combat, not to kill the top officer commanding his side, lest there be nobody to call for a surrender once a battle appeared to be lost. (The same is true of not killing drummers and fife players, who were the only ones able to telegraph, over the din of battle, that a surrender was being offered.

4-How should an attack on an unarmed Iranian naval vessel stationed in India during a festival be assessed?

The US submarine torpedoing and sinking an Iranian frigate known to be unarmed and not bound for Iran in any case as it would have been a sitting duck in the Persian Gulf of Arabian Sea. The Iris Dena was returning from an India-hosted fleet regatta featuring Navy ships from 74 countries, including Iran. (The US sent an admiral but no ship. Participating ships were all required to arrive unarmed. The unprovoked US attack submarine committed not just a potential war crime but was incredibly cowardly, akin to a soldier shooting dead an unarmed and unaware enemy soldier surprised while eating breakfast or relieving himself.Even if the crime ion sinking the ship is not prosecuted, the captain of the sub, Secretary of the Navy, as well as War Secretary Pete Hegseth should all be publicly shamed. But what could we expect when the Brill Cream-slathered head of the War Department publicly says “This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it’s not a fair fight.” Puffing out his Nazi image-tattooed chest, he added “We are punching them while they’re down, and that’s exactly how it should be.”
Hegseth would be surprised to learn, if he can read, that a fair number of Nazi U-boat captains had their subs, at considerable risk, stay surfaced to rescue survivors of merchant ships they had successfully torpedoed and sunk.
The captain and crew of the killer sub however, whose torpedo sank the ship and killed, by explosion or drowning, at least 87 of the ship’s complement, simply sailed off and abandoned the survivors in the water. Sri Lankan vessels, notified of the incident by a civilian vessel, raced to the scene and rescued 32 survivors who were brought to the island nation’s hospitals. The rest of the Iranian ship’s 130-man crew, about a dozen sailors, are still missing and presumed lost.

5-Did Israel set a trap for Trump that the United States ended up falling into?

Of course civilians (and especially children, the elderly and disabled) in any war are supposed to be protected from harm in any conflict under ther Geneva Conventions, so attacking housing, schools, hospital, water and sewer treatment facilities and electric power plants are presumptive war crimes, though both Israel and the US routinely commit them with impunity, Israel always claunubgv that Hamas fighters use the destroyed structure and the civilians in it as “hostages.”
Typically and sadly only countries that lose wars ever get prosecuted for such crimes. And of course, the US is so powerful that even when it loses war, as in Vietnam, or even ends up with a draw, as in the Korean War, there is no way to successfully prosecute, much less enforce, a punishment.

6-How should attacks on civilian infrastructure and residential areas during wartime be viewed?

The spreading of a war between two large rivals appears to me to be almost inevitable in the Middle East, where local rivalries rooted in religious rivalries, tribal animosities and distrust, linguistic and cultural differences, and given the legacy of boundaries deliberately drawn to encourage such divisions by the British as a colonizing empire.

In any event, whether intentionally or simply by being the new empire non that region of the world, the US’s many bases in countries like Kuwait, the UAE, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere can make the host countries targets of Iranian drones and missiles even if some of those host countries might wish to remain neutral in the current war. Meanwhile, the US over years of engaging in illegal air assaults and special forces raids on places like a.Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Muslim countries of North Africa, helps promote instability, making such places vulnerable to the spread of conflicts.

7-Does escalating the conflict in this way risk dragging the entire region into a wider war?

I doubt Israel needed to “entrap” the US into attacking Iran. A line of presidents, from Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, GW Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden have messed around militarily in the Middle East, often specifically acting in Israel’s interest but also in what most of them considered to be in the US’s interest too, for controlling Mideast oil. The truth is that the US has, since Israel’s founding in 1948, allied itself with Israel, seeking that apartheid and increasingly genocidal nation as a reliable outpost, military base and arms-length covert-action arm furthering US goals in the regions, long before Trump blundered onto the scene.