You’re absolutely allowed to sink a warship in a war. The term war crime becomes meaningless if we cover military materiel.

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xocnad 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Others have pointed out that the war crime is not picking up survivors. What shocks the conscience here regardless that sinking the ship itself may not be a war crime is the seemingly obvious reason this was done was target practice involving mostly innocent lives. The US would have had many opportunities to simply board and seize the ship. If there had been any resistance at that point that put US forces at risk then force may have some minimal justification for taking lives.

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tptacek 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The San Remo Manual will be on the first SERP of a Google search and consists of numbered paragraphs specifically to make it easy to cite. Which paragraph numbers support the position you're stating here?

	▲	xocnad 19 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Technically not my position - was pointing out the redirect other's had made. I however did that with the background of media reports identifying the the "double tap" missile strike by the US on a supposed drug boat in the Caribbean as a war crime [1]. Not being familiar with the San Remo manual, a quick review says it does not contradict the 2nd Geneva Convention but it does not seem to directly address shipwrecked survivors. My read of GCII Article 18 [2] seems to clearly make this a requirement however. My focus was on the the inhumanity of torpedoing the ship given the situation. Are you implying you disagree with this? [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/11/28/... [2] https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gcii-1949/art...

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JumpCrisscross 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> war crime is not picking up survivors

Honest question, is this required of belligerents? How is a submarine even meant to provide such aid?

It was a mean attack. But we seek to be continuing the trend of turning highly precedented and obvious tactics into war crimes, thereby making the term equate to war in general.

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mpyne 10 hours ago | parent [-]

> > war crime is not picking up survivors

> Honest question, is this required of belligerents? How is a submarine even meant to provide such aid?

No, it is not. Otherwise the U.S. committed several more war crimes for each of the other Iranian navy ships that were sunk by bombs or cruise missiles rather than by submarine-launched torpedoes.

International law (including treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory) require belligerents to attempt to rescue survivors if possible without putting the rescuing ship at undue risk. ‘[a]fter each engagement, Parties to the conflict shall, without delay, take all possible measures to search for and collect the shipwrecked, wounded and sick, to protect them against pillage and ill-treatment, to ensure their adequate care, and to search for the dead and prevent their being despoiled’. (emphasis added for clarity)

https://seapower.navy.gov.au/analysis/fire-and-forget-search... is a good writeup (written before the current hostilities) and specifically notes the difficulty involved for submarines in particular of directly engaging in rescue after an engagement.

	▲	xocnad 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Otherwise the U.S. committed several more war crimes for each of the other Iranian navy ships that were sunk by bombs or cruise missiles rather than by submarine-launched torpedoes. I am having difficulty parsing your reasoning here. What matters is were "all possible measures taken to search for and collect the shipwrecked", not the manner of the attack. You may be implying that bombs/cruise missiles left no possibilities but that isn't a certainty if there were US ships in the vicinity. Regarding your provided reference to it being "difficult" for submarines to collect shipwrecked survivors - the treatment seems cursory and more germane to conflicts where there is more parity. In this situation what was the risk to the submarine? Exposing it's positions to the Iranians who had not other ships in the area (and per US assertions no other Navy at all)? Coming under attack from a missile launched from Iran while surfaced?

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testing22321 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

War? Trump himself today said it’s not a war.

He invaded a foreign country because he wanted to. The whole thing is a crime too to bottom