Water, power, oil

Trump said Monday that if Iran does not open the Strait of Hormuz, the US will not only destroy its power plants and oil wells but also "possibly all desalination plants". It is the first time a sitting US president has explicitly threatened to destroy a country's drinking water infrastructure. International human rights experts and UN officials have said the threat to strike power plants constitutes a potential war crime. Adding desalination plants escalates the threat to a different order.

Iran is an arid country with severe water scarcity. Desalination plants supply entire coastal cities. Destroying them does not affect military capacity: it affects the lives of millions of civilians who need water to drink. It is the definition of collective punishment. The same applies to power plants: without electricity, hospitals, cold chains for medicine and food, and communications systems cease to function.

The White House said Trump still wants a deal before April 6. But threatening to destroy water, energy and fuel is not diplomacy: it is siege. The logic is that civilian suffering will force Tehran to negotiate. It is the same logic that did not work in Iraq, did not work in Syria, and rarely works anywhere. Authoritarian regimes do not fall from thirst. They fall when the army turns. And Iran's army is still firing.