Military strikes that damaged two water storage facilities in southern Iran’s Bemani district on June 10 may constitute a war crime, military and legal experts said Thursday after reviewing media reports and visual evidence of the attack.
The strike damaged a key water reservoir that served about 20,000 people living in Bemani, a small district roughly two miles from the Strait of Hormuz, according to Iran’s state broadcaster. The attack occurred amid a historic drought that has left the country with acute water scarcity, a fact that Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group, said could make further disruptions “catastrophic for the population.”
The question of whether the water tanks were the intended target or were hit unintentionally drives the legal analysis, experts said.
Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who advised on use-of-force issues under Republican and Democratic administrations, said the determination is critical. “It’s either a military objective or it’s a civilian object: attacking one is lawful, attacking the other is a war crime,” Finucane said.
Finucane said he does not recall the U.S. military ever conducting a deliberate strike on water infrastructure in any campaign he was involved in. “It’s not clear to me whether that is what took place here,” he said.
Multiple former officials with deep experience in military targeting said an intentional U.S. attack on a water facility would be unprecedented.
“It’s never been on the table to hit any water infrastructure – in any campaign that I’ve been a part of,” said Wes Bryant, who advised the U.S. military on the use of force in Iraq and Syria. “Pre-Trump 2.0, I would have said that ‘Absolutely we don’t target water infrastructure. This is a misidentification.’ But now I’m not sure.”
Iran’s state broadcaster said Wednesday’s strikes were carried out by the U.S. military, though The Guardian reported it could not independently verify that claim. “We are aware of reports and are looking into it,” Tim Hawkins, a spokesperson for U.S. Central Command, said in a statement. The White House declined to comment and referred questions to Centcom, the publication reported.
The attack on Bemani came shortly after Centcom announced strikes on “Iranian air defense, ground control stations, and surveillance radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz” by U.S. Air Force and Navy fighter jets, according to a post on X.
Iran’s semi-official news agency posted photos of destroyed water tanks and images of munition fragments that Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army technician, identified as pieces of a GBU-39 bomb — a precision-guided munition produced in the United States and often sold to allies in the Middle East. Ball described the damaged water facility as “remote” and said it was “very unlikely that two buildings were both directly hit if that’s not what they were aiming for.”
President Donald Trump boasted Wednesday that “we hit them hard yesterday and we’re going to hit them hard again today,” according to The Guardian. Conflicting reports emerged Thursday about whether the U.S., Iran and several Gulf countries had reached a deal to end the conflict. Trump said he was calling off planned strikes in advance of a deal agreed to in principle on most major points. The publication noted that Trump has claimed dozens of times to be close to an agreement to end the war.
Lawmakers from both parties raised concerns about the president’s continued use of force in Iran and the risks of strikes on civilian infrastructure during a heat wave and drought.
“Iran is one of the most water-challenged countries in the world right now, and we’re in the hottest part of the year where damages to civilian water access are going to have the most acute consequences,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat. “Whether it was a mistake in targeting or intentional targeting, this is not a minor matter.”
Kaine said he planned to bring a war powers resolution to the Senate in response to the latest strikes and would demand answers from the Pentagon. Congress voted June 3 to constrain U.S. action in Iran, securing four Republican votes in favor of an unprecedented resolution to curb Trump’s authority to continue the conflict. Kaine said that if the Bemani water strike turns out to be intentional, it would “absolutely” affect Republican support for the war.
Several military analysts and Iran experts said the Bemani strike was the first publicly reported attack on water infrastructure in Iran. The development follows an earlier strike on a girls’ school in Minab that killed dozens of students aged seven to 12, on which the U.S. military has not commented. Kaine also said he had concerns about the role of artificial intelligence in U.S. military targeting decisions.
“The combination of American citizens being mad about gas prices and losing Republican votes who had been supportive … they don’t affect his ability [to wage war], but they start to affect his calculations about going in a different direction,” Kaine said.