Anonymousabout 21 hours ago
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's April 16 declaration that US forces are prepared to strike Iran's power plants and energy infrastructure sits on top of a documented historical record — from the 1991 Iraq grid campaign to NATO's 1999 Yugoslavia strikes — that shows how quickly such attacks translate into civilian mortality. The legal framework under Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, the fractured response from European allies, and oil markets already pricing a $100+ barrel of WTI all constrain the threshold at which "prepared" becomes "executed." Independent analysts dispute the Pentagon's confidence that a degraded Iranian air defense network makes the operation clean or coercively effective.