By Dr Dan Steinbock
Since fall 2023, Israel has implemented its Obliteration Doctrine in Gaza and now in Lebanon. The United States has adopted it in Iran. In the process, the worst mass atrocity crimes are being normalized in the Global South.
In late March, President Trump threatened to “obliterate Iran’s energy grid,” if a ceasefire was not reached. In his public post, Truth Social, he listed explicit targets, such as power plants, oil facilities and desalination (water) infrastructure. This in addition to the already-massive regional costs and global losses.
On April 4, Trump gave a public ultimatum warning that “hell will rain down” if Iran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours. The statement featured direct threats to energy infrastructure, water systems.
A day later, on Easter Sunday of all days, Trump posted an expletive-laden warning to Iran, threatening to strike civilian infrastructure if the Strait of Hormuz was not reopened. The President set a deadline, stating that if a deal was not reached to “open the F—in’ Strait,” the country would be “living in Hell”
The threats did not come out of the blue. They form a pattern. They have led over 100 international law experts to warn that the US strikes on Iran violate UN Charter and may be war crimes.
Whether Trump will deliver his threat or not, the damage has occurred. The administration has set the stage for the normalization of mass atrocity crimes.
Obliteration rhetoric as a prelude to mass atrocities
What is notable about these statements by Trump, Defense Secretary Hegseth and other members of the cabinet is that they are not just vague wartime rhetoric. They explicitly reference civilian infrastructure systems, including energy (electricity), water (desalination) and economy-wide assets. Presenting themselves as national security contingencies, they are a prelude to mass atrocities.
Since the onset of the Iran attacks, President Trump has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. military has “literally obliterated” Iran’s military capabilities and leadership as part of thea ongoing conflict.
Such statements are problematic because they strongly support allegations of war crimes, particularly targeting civilian infrastructure; collective punishment and disproportionate warfare. Since they are not anomalous but systematic, they also appear to support crimes against humanity. Even independently, they seem to constitute unlawful threats of force
Here’s the bottom line: in international law, words by senior officials are not just political; they are evidentiary. And this applies particularly situations when those words explicitly reference destroying civilian systems. As a result, they materially strengthen the legal case that ensuing actions were not accidental – but foreseeable, planned, or accepted.
What has been left unsaid is that the White House has embraced core aspects of the devastating military strategy that Israel developed in the early 2000s, tested in Dahiya, Beirut in 2006 and has executed broadly in Gaza’s genocide since fall 2023, as I showed in The Obliteration Doctrine (2025).
Tens of thousands of civilian sites damaged and destroyed
The US government typically describes its strikes as targeted against military, infrastructure, or nuclear sites, and has not officially verified the scale of civilian damage reported by Iranian authorities.
Yet, based on reports from the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) and Iranian officials as of late March and early April 2026, Iran reports that over 90,000 civilian sites – including homes, medical facilities, and schools – have been damaged or destroyed in joint US-Israeli air strikes. That’s over 300 health and emergency facilities. The IRCS has characterized this damage as a deliberate campaign against civilian infrastructure.
These claims come amid a rapid escalation of conflict starting in late February 2026, which has resulted in up to 3.2 to 3.5 million people being displaced within Iran.
IRCS numbers are not independently verified totals. But they are directionally consistent with all other evidence streams.
If the figures reported by the IRCS and Iranian officials are even broadly accurate, the legal implications under international law are extremely serious, because the scale itself becomes legally probative.
With the US at war with Iran and embroiled in conflicts around the world, the Trump White House is asking Congress to approve about $1.5 trillion for defense in the 2027 fiscal year. If enacted, that amount – a 40% increase to the current level – would set US military spending at its highest level in modern history.
It would also amount to a free license to export the Obliteration Doctrine worldwide.
Obliteration as violation of international law
As demonstrated in The Obliteration Doctrine, this doctrine prioritizes the total destruction of an enemy’s infrastructure and population over traditional military objectives. It relies on four old and brutal methods of devastation.
The scorched-earth policy is a longstanding military strategy of destroying everything that allows an enemy military force to fight a war, including the critical infrastructure, military and state institutions, buildings, crops, livestock, security and so on. Modern historical examples feature the American Civil War and American Indian Wars, and Nazi Germany’s war against the Soviet Union.
Nonetheless, the deployment of scorched-earth policy against non-combatants is banned under the 1977 Geneva Conventions.
Since collective punishment targets individuals who are not responsible for the perpetrated acts, it undermines modern legal systems, which restrict criminal liability to individuals. Yet, it has been widely deployed through history, from late medieval Florence to American Civil War and Nazi occupation of Poland and Yugoslavia, to postwar counter-insurgency campaigns.
Like scorched-earth policy, collective punishment is prohibited in both international and non-international armed conflicts.
Civilian victimization is the purposeful use of violence against noncombatants in a conflict. In civilian victimization, violence is often deployed to foster civilian cooperation and isolate the military adversary by removing civilians from an area, as applied in the U.S. Strategic Hamlet program during the Vietnam War.
Like scorched-earth policy and collective punishment, civilian victimization is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.
In its contemporary form, the Obliteration Doctrine accounts for the decimation of urban infrastructure and the genocidal atrocities in the Gaza Strip since 2023. It was first tested in 2006 in Dahiya, a Shia Muslim enclave in Beirut. The net effect has been genocide.
In The Obliteration Doctrine, I argued that Gaza is “most likely a prelude of worse to come.” Now it is spreading to Lebanon, Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East.
Toward algocides
Since the postwar era, these old sources of obliteration have been coupled with largely indiscriminate area bombardment. In Gaza, it set a historical precedent.
In principle, aerial warfare should comply with laws of war, which regulates the conditions for initiating war (jus ad bellum) and the conduct of hostilities (jus in bello). In particular, aerial operations should comply with the principles of humanitarian law: that is, of military necessity, objective, and proportionality.
Based on Article 51 of Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, carpet bombing has been considered a war crime since 1977, conveniently after the Vietnam War.
There is one more ingredient to the contemporary Obliteration Doctrine: Israel’s mass assassination factories deploying artificial intelligence for maximum devastation. After October 7, 2023 the Israeli military gave officers sweeping approval to embrace the kill lists of the Lavender program, knowing that the system made “errors” in about 10% of cases and occasionally targeted individuals who had no connection to militants.
For every Hamas operative marked by Lavender, it was permissible to kill up to 15-20 civilians. Backed with AI, the military purposely used “dumb bombs” to hit these homes. Algocide can be defined as a deliberate effort to use the algorithms of artificial intelligence in genocidal atrocities.
In the past weeks, Israel and the US have deployed AI-powered warfare in Iran and Lebanon, using advanced systems for intelligence analysis, target generation, and drone/missile tracking to accelerate the “kill chain”. Israel is using AI tools like “Lohem” and AI-driven data analysis for targeting in Lebanon, while the US relies on Pentagon AI program “Project Maven” to analyze data in the conflict with Iran.
Reports on Israeli AI deployment and US AI-warfare indicate these technologies have enhanced targeting speed while raising serious questions about deliberate civilian damage. These systems were largely matured in the Gaza.
The rules-based order of butchery
Here’s the problem: the interlocking core aspects of Obliteration Doctrine directly violate several fundamental principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), also known as the laws of war:
- Collective punishment is strictly prohibited by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Customary IHL Rule 103;
- Scorched earth tactics is illegal under Additional Protocol I, Article 54;
- Indiscriminate bombing is prohibited by Article 51 of Protocol I;
- Under Geneva Conventions intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime (Principle of Distinction);
- IHL prohibits attacks with excessive civilian loss (Principle of Proportionality).
Nonetheless, AI-enabled warfare does not exempt from these laws. If anything, using AI to facilitate “mass assassination” without human oversight is considered a violation of the obligation to prevent genocide.
The Obliteration Doctrine represents a shift from collateral damage to deliberate civilian victimization, by the countries of the West in the Global South. It is now transforming “war” which is no longer war, and warfare which can no longer called “warfare.”
The blatant destruction of civilians and civilian infrastructure is not war. It is illegal destruction. Nor is it warfare. It is butchery by the mighty.
The world of brutal great power rivalry has a dark track-record. It goes back to capitalist modernity and lethal colonialism in the 19th century. But the new variant is far more lethal and ambitious. It seeks to globalize obliteration.
This article was originally published on Informed Comment (US)
Dr Dan Steinbock, an expert of the multipolar world, is the founder of Difference Group and has served at the India, China and America Institute (US), Shanghai Institute for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). He is also the author of The Obliteration Doctrine (Sept. 2025) and The Fall of Israel (Oct. 2024). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net/
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While Butcher Bibi (the American President in absentia) extols the virtues of genocide, land clearing by bombardment and land theft by any means possible., the world does nothing ….. just like the situation in Europe in 1933-1939.
Meanwhile back in the Occupied Territories the ZIONAZI ”pioneers” are terrorising Indigenous Palestinian landowners, displacing and dispossessing them before colonising and settling the ruins.
Who are the terrorists?? The short hair-cut former amoral IDF members or the curly locked Torah ”scholars” kept away from the sharp end to protect their misogyny practices??
From the SMH 140426:
Religious Zionists spearheading a radical movement sweeping Israel
With international attention focused on Iran, the “pioneers” of Israel’s religious Zionist movement have their sights set on Gaza.
Paul Nuki and Nedal Hamdouna
April 12, 2026
At a picnic spot and a memorial for fallen Israeli soldiers just a few hundred metres from the Gaza border, Israel’s new pioneers are planning to expand the country.
During the six-week war in Iran, international attention has turned away from Gaza. But for these would-be settlers, it has remained very much in focus.
Israeli settlers walk in the direction of the Israel-Gaza border during a rally near the Kibbutz Kfar Aza in southern Israel on February 5, 2026.
Israeli settlers walk in the direction of the Israel-Gaza border during a rally near the Kibbutz Kfar Aza in southern Israel on February 5, 2026.AFP
Visitors are handed leaflets marked “Our Gaza”, showing how they intend to settle the entirety of the strip, creating settlements in the top, middle and bottom of the Palestinian territory between the horizontal military corridors the Israeli military has carved there.
“The people in Gaza are generally terrorists or terrorist supporters, and they don’t deserve to live there,” says Neri Abraham, an articulate 19-year-old with ringlets and a knitted kippah as he gestures across the fields to the Gaza fence and the ruins beyond.
“The good ones can stay if they like and live peacefully under Israeli rule, but the rest should go to Egypt. And the terrorists? Well, they are terrorists, and I don’t care what happens to them.”
Right-wing Jewish settlers gather near the Gaza border last week.
Right-wing Jewish settlers gather near the Gaza border last week.Anadolu via Getty Images
Abraham and his colleagues are “religious Zionists” and they are the vanguard of a new and radical social movement sweeping Israeli politics and its institutions.
They are dedicated to the creation of a greater Israel – one which encompasses not just Gaza and the West Bank, but the Golan Heights and parts of southern Lebanon too.
Fuelled by a political system that has given Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir outsized power and influence, they have become the political and cultural force in Israel to be reckoned with.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announcing a major expansion of settlement building in the West Bank.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announcing a major expansion of settlement building in the West Bank.AP
As handy with guns as they are with the Torah, their men now dominate large parts of the Israeli army, manning many of its front-line commando and special forces units.
Avichi Goodman, 34, an Israel Defence Forces officer and rabbi whose father moved to Israel 40 years ago, says the sect’s success is explained by its willingness to act and serve.
‘We have to teach the Gazans that they have lost. How do you do that? You must take this land from them.’
Avichi Goodman, IDF officer and rabbi
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He, like the others gathered near the fence, exudes the rugged pioneering spirit of the country’s kibbutzniks of old, combined with the religiosity of the black-clad ultra-Orthodox.
“When help is needed, who turns up? Religious Zionists,” says Goodman.
The group’s outlook and ideology are direct and formulaic and many of the same arguments are deployed repeatedly. They are go-to heuristics used to argue against any counter-view.
Goodman, and two others, remind the London Telegraph of a quote by former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir on guns: “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.”
The logic of the would-be settlers is as self-serving as it is catchy.
Despite the ceasefire, life remains extremely tough for Gaza’s inhabitants.
Despite the ceasefire, life remains extremely tough for Gaza’s inhabitants.AP
“We have learnt that war is binary. You win or lose. If you take a middle line, you get rocks on your head,” says Goodman.
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“We have to teach the Gazans that they have lost. How do you do that? You must take this land from them.
“We want a victory now that prevents future wars. We want to finish all the wars now.”
Across the fence in Gaza, people say there is “no war but no peace”.
The roads hum as you approach, as they are still imprinted by the tanks that were rushed there on October 7, 2023, but the near-constant artillery barrage that was maintained for more than two years stopped when a Gaza ceasefire came into effect in October last year.
Nevertheless, more than 720 people have been killed in Gaza during the ceasefire by Israeli forces, and conditions within the Strip, although improved, remain dire.
‘The basic necessities of life are nonexistent. Our children do not go to school, we have no rights, we do not feel safe. I have a constant fear famine will return.’
Abed Al-Hadi Qahman
Abu Said Al-Barrawi, a 57-year-old farmer, said his and other families “live like cats moving their kittens from one place to another” in search of safety, food and shelter.
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“I am a farmer, but my land, which I used to cultivate, lies behind the [Israeli-controlled] yellow line. I dreamed of returning to it after the ceasefire was announced, but nothing has changed.”
The winter, which has only just broken, was “hellish”, said Abed Al-Hadi Qahman, 40, from northern Gaza.
“Our tent was blown away several times, our belongings got soaked, and we were struggling just to protect our children from the biting cold.
“The basic necessities of life are nonexistent. Our children do not go to school; we have no rights, we do not feel safe, and we do not feel that the war has ended. I am terrified of being displaced yet again, and I have a constant fear that famine will return.”
Thousands of Gazans are still living in makeshift camps.
Thousands of Gazans are still living in makeshift camps.AP
Miraculously, the Gaza ceasefire – overseen by a US military team parachuted in last year by US President Donald Trump – has held over the past five weeks, and the peace process is grinding on.
A technocratic board of Palestinians has been put in place to administer the Gaza Strip, reporting to Trump’s Board of Peace and its executive board, on which former British prime minister Tony Blair sits.
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Although hardly reported, a plan for disarming Hamas was published last month.
It envisages a gradual handing in of guns over an eight-month timeline and Israeli forces withdrawing completely upon “verification that Gaza is free of weaponry”.
The disarmament process will be monitored by a weapons collection verification committee, a body to be established by Nikolay Mladenov, a Bulgarian politician and diplomat who serves on the Board of Peace.
Related Article
A tent camp for displaced Palestinians stretches across the Gaza City seaport.
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
As world turns attention to Iran, rats, insects and a fracturing peace process engulf Gaza
Hamas has agreed in principle to disarmament and it has until the end of the week to accept the proposal, although negotiations are likely to drag on.
The terrorist group is unhappy with Israel’s failure to adhere to all elements of the first phase of the peace plan, pointing to the lower than promised number of aid trucks that have entered Gaza, repeated Israeli military strikes and a recent tightening of the Israeli-controlled yellow line.
There is support for the disarmament plan within Gaza, but limited hope that it will be swiftly implemented – prerequisites for Israeli withdrawal and the reconstruction process to begin.
“I am in favour of disarming Hamas because their weapons have brought us no security, nor have they protected us from the occupation’s missiles; instead, they have served as a reason and a pretext for the killing of the people in Gaza,” said Hamza K, a 32-year-old Gazan, last week.
“I fear that Hamas might renege on what they signed, leading Israel to return to war under that pretext.”
Israel is moving towards a general election in October, and the ruling coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu will be looking for any excuse it can find to upend the Gaza peace process.
Like the Iran ceasefire, it is seen as something imposed on Israel by the US and many Israelis – such as the religious Zionists – see annexation as a better option.
Provocative vision
At the inauguration of a new settlement in the West Bank this week, Smotrich provocatively set this vision for a greater Israel.
Settlers gather near the border calling for the re-establishment of Jewish communities inside Gaza.
Settlers gather near the border calling for the re-establishment of Jewish communities inside Gaza.Anadolu via Getty Images
“There will be expansion in Gaza that will extend our borders. In Lebanon, to the Litani, in Syria, Mount Hermon, parts of the north, south and east,” he told the gathered crowd.
This is no longer a fringe view in Israel. About 22 per cent of the Jewish population in Israel identify with the religious Zionist movement and support its settlement ambitions.
Not all are extremists, but some are, and violence in the West Bank has reached unprecedented levels since October 7.
Related Article
IDF soldiers take up positions during an army raid in the West Bank town of Nablus last month. There are warnings that Israeli forces are becoming too thinly stretched.
Middle East at war
The crisis drawing Israeli troops away from the Iran war
The UN recorded about 1800 incidents of settler violence between October 7, 2023 and December 16, 2024, averaging four incidents per day.
More than 1000 Palestinians, including at least 233 children, have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers over the period.
“Jewish terrorism” is raging in the West Bank with the backing of the Israeli state, said a letter signed by 21 of Israel’s most senior former security chiefs last week.
The letter, signed by former heads of the Mossad, Shin Bet and the IDF, said settler violence had turned into terrorism and threatened to bring down the Jewish State.
“A black flag unfurls over the [Israeli] blue and white,” they said. “The Jewish terrorism raging in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], with the tolerance – or worse, the backing – of government authorities, constitutes not only a profound moral failure, but a grave strategic threat to Israel’s security, especially in a time of war,” says the letter.
On the Gaza border, none of the settlers the Telegraph spoke to proposed violence or any other illegal act. But they were certain they “held the truth” and were determined to do what they believed God had demanded of them.
“We just want to make Gaza Jewish again,” said Hadat Barhai, a 36-year-old mother of nine and a local leader of the movement.
“I don’t understand why after two and a half years [the Gazans] are still there, these miserable people.
“The world must open their doors and let them go. They do not deserve Hamas, but nor can we live together.”
The Telegraph, London
It’s time for Australia to exit ANZUS, cancel AUKUS, take back control of Pine Gap , North West Cape, Fleet Base West (HMAS Stirling) and discontinue all military rotations with USA. USA’s foreign policy does NOT align with Australian moral and civil values and is also incompatible with the principles of the Charter of United Nations.
The cocky says much (phew) and informs us that contemptible people in Israel, eternally brainwashed in superliquid superstition of supremacy and righteousness, necessitating murder and theft, are irritated that, after two thousand and forty years of this outrageous shitty fantasising, nobody wants to volunteer to die and disappear for a master race claim. Is there a chosen race, a promised land, outside of Disney? Israeli murder and theft will be horribly countered one day, and will never be rewarded. Consider Tacitus.., they create a desert and will call it peace.