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On Wednesday, the U.S. military bombed what appeared to be drinking water facilities in southwestern Iran, near the contested Strait of Hormuz.
It is so far unclear whether the strikes, which occurred near the village of Bemani, were an intentional attempt to destroy civilian infrastructure. Such an attack would be classified as a war crime under international law.
The facilities that were bombed belong to the Hormozgan Water and Wastewater Company. The U.S. claims that the attacks were in response to the downing of an Apache helicopter earlier this week. Iran responded by saying the rationale for the attacks was a “false pretext.”
“The U.S. must be held accountable for committing such systematic brutal attacks on civilian life-sustaining infrastructure,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said.
Water supply for around 20,000 residents was temporarily disrupted due to the attack. Iranian media indicated that the flow of water has since been restored. Still, the destruction of the water facilities is especially problematic for people living nearby, as they live under difficult conditions due to extreme heat and decades-long drought.
Iran is classified as facing “extremely high” baseline water stress, according to the World Resources Institute. The destruction of water infrastructure during the joint U.S.-Israeli war on Iran — particularly damage to desalination plants — has made matters worse.
As the war has dragged on for over 100 days, President Donald Trump has indicated that he is tiring of negotiating with Tehran. (His methods of negotiation — which include posting on Truth Social — have been widely criticized.)
Trump’s descriptions of the war — particularly his rosy assessments of how the U.S. military is faring — have also been questioned. Indeed, over the past three months, the president has claimed more than three dozen times that a deal between the U.S. and Iran had been negotiated or was close to being resolved, only for negotiations to fall apart days later. Iranian officials have frequently contradicted Trump’s assertions, calling into question whether he is even attempting to negotiate a deal.
In a Truth Social post on Thursday morning, Trump promised that more attacks were set to come later that day.
“The United States will be hitting Iran (Whose Navy, Air Force, Radar, Anti Aircraft, and all other forms of Defense, together with most of its offensive capability, are GONE!), VERY HARD TONIGHT,” Trump wrote, promising to hit other civilian infrastructure, including “Kharg Island and other oil infrastructure points,” in his post.
Later in the day, Trump reneged on that plan, stating in another post that he had “cancelled the scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran this evening.”
International watchdog organizations have repeatedly condemned the U.S. and Israel for attacks on civilian infrastructure.
“Under international humanitarian law applicable to the armed conflict in the Middle East, oil, gas, and other energy infrastructure are presumptively civilian objects…[A]ttacking them would be unlawfully disproportionate if the expected harm to civilians and civilian structures exceeded the anticipated military gain,” read an analysis from Human Rights Watch in April.
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