DAY 104 — June 10, 2026

No Rules of Engagement

How Pete Hegseth Dismantled the Legal Guardrails — and What Happened Next

Pete Hegseth said the quiet part out loud on March 4, 2026.

Standing before reporters at CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, the Secretary of Defense announced that American forces would have "no stupid rules of engagement" in the Iran war. "We're playing for keeps," he said. "Our war fighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly. Our rules of engagement are bold, precise, and designed to unleash American power — not shackle it."

He wasn't bluffing.

What followed over the next 102 days is a documented record of strikes on schools, hospitals, water systems, and civilian infrastructure. A record condemned by over 100 international law experts from Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. A record the Trump administration has blamed on Iran.

Tonight — June 10, 2026 — as U.S. jets struck South Pars gas infrastructure and destroyed water reservoirs serving 20,000 civilians in Sirik County during a heat wave reaching 122 degrees Fahrenheit, Hegseth stood at a podium and said it again: "If we need to negotiate with bombs, we'll negotiate with bombs, and we're very good at it."

This dispatch is a record. Not of what was alleged. Of what is documented.

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I. First, Remove the Lawyers

The sequence matters. Before the first bomb fell on Iran, Hegseth dismantled the legal architecture designed to prevent what came next.

On February 21, 2025 — more than a year before the Iran war began — Hegseth fired the Judge Advocate General of the Army (Lt. Gen. Joseph B. Berger III) and the Judge Advocate General of the Air Force (Lt. Gen. Charles L. Plummer) without public notice, without citing misconduct, and without following the statutory process that governs their removal. He called them "roadblocks to orders given by a commander in chief."

Federal law is explicit. Under 10 U.S.C. §§ 7037(e) and 9037(f): No officer or employee of the Department of Defense may interfere with the ability of the Judge Advocate General to give independent legal advice to the Secretary of the Army or the Chief of Staff of the Army. The Army and Air Force statutes contain substantively identical language. Hegseth violated both.

He then commissioned his personal lawyer into the Navy's JAG Corps — installing a loyalist into the one remaining slot. In March, he issued a memo ordering a split of duties between JAG officers and general counsel offices, effectively gutting the legal oversight function entirely.

Former JAGs called it what it was: a "ruthless overhaul" designed not to improve the legal system but to evade it.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, put the consequence plainly: sidelining the JAGs "risks increasing the chances of civilian harm as the war against Iran continues."

The former JAG working group — lawyers who had served the institution for decades — issued a collective statement: "If proper legal guardrails were in place, many of the administration's actions wouldn't have taken place."

Then the guardrails came down. Then the war started.

II. Day One: The School in Minab

February 28, 2026 — 10:23 AM Local Time
Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School, Minab, Hormozgan Province, Iran

The Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School taught boys and girls on separate floors. On the first morning of the Iran war, as hundreds of U.S. and Israeli strikes lit up the country, a triple-tap Tomahawk missile strike hit the school between 10:23 and 10:45 AM local time. Most of those inside were girls between the ages of seven and twelve. At least 175 people were killed.

It is one of the largest civilian casualty events attributable to the U.S. military in decades.

Trump immediately denied U.S. responsibility. "Done by Iran," he posted on Truth Social on March 7. A U.S. military internal investigation reached a different conclusion. Reuters reported on March 5 that a preliminary finding pointed to likely U.S. responsibility. The New York Times analysis confirmed the strike was consistent with the pattern of U.S. operations targeting a nearby Iranian naval installation. UNESCO called it "a grave violation of humanitarian law." Human Rights Watch called for a war crimes investigation. The Pentagon has not released any basic information about the strike. No accountability has been announced. No investigation findings have been made public.

"We write with grave concern regarding the airstrikes on a girls' elementary school that reportedly killed at least 168 people — mostly children — in Minab, Iran during the opening salvo of U.S. and Israeli operations on Iran on February 28. To be clear: the war against Iran is a war of choice without Congressional authorization." — 43 United States Senators, letter to Pete Hegseth, March 11, 2026

III. The Pattern: 22 Schools, 17 Healthcare Facilities

The Minab school was not an anomaly. It was the opening of a pattern.

By mid-May 2026, according to reporting compiled by the Arab Center DC, U.S. bombardment had destroyed 22 schools and 17 healthcare facilities in Iran, killing more than 1,700 civilians. By March 10, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) had documented over 1,245 civilian deaths and more than 12,000 injuries. Iran claims more than 2,000 people killed across roughly 90,000 civilian sites struck. Those figures cannot be independently verified at this time. The documented pattern of specific incidents — school, hospital, water infrastructure — can be.

The 100+ international law experts who signed an open letter in Just Security in April characterized the pattern across four categories: the legality of the decision to go to war; the conduct of hostilities; threatening rhetoric from senior officials; and the dismantling of civilian protection structures inside the U.S. government.

"We are seriously concerned about strikes that have hit schools, health facilities, and homes. The 2026 National Defense Strategy omits references to civilian protection and international law entirely." — Over 100 international law experts, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Just Security, April 2026

That last line is not rhetorical. The 2026 National Defense Strategy — a formal governing document — omits civilian protection and international law. The omission was deliberate. It reflects what Hegseth built after firing the JAGs: a legal architecture with no floor.

IV. The Water Strikes: A Documented War Crime

March 7, 2026 — First Strike on Water Infrastructure
Qeshm Island Desalination Plant, Strait of Hormuz

A U.S. strike hit a desalination plant on Qeshm Island, disrupting water access for approximately 30 Iranian villages. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called it "a blatant and desperate crime." Both the U.S. and Israel denied responsibility. Independent investigations concluded otherwise.

June 10, 2026 — Second Strike on Water Infrastructure
Sirik County, Hormozgan Province — Temperature: 113–122°F

Tonight, U.S. strikes destroyed two concrete water storage reservoirs in the Bemani district of Sirik County. The reservoirs — one 500 cubic meters, one 2,000 cubic meters — supplied drinking water to Sirik town and surrounding districts including Bemani and Kouhestak. Twenty thousand people lost access to safe water. They lost it during a punishing heat wave. Regional temperatures on June 10 reached between 45°C and 50°C — 113 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. The communities affected were already experiencing chronic water scarcity before the first bomb fell.

Abdolhamid Hamzehpour, managing director of the Hormozgan Water and Wastewater Company, confirmed the damage. Iranian state media called conditions on the ground "extremely difficult and critical." Isa Bozorgzadeh, spokesman for Iran's water industry, called it a war crime. He is correct.

Under international humanitarian law — specifically the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol I — objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population are explicitly protected from attack. That category includes drinking water installations and water treatment facilities. The Berlin Rules on Water Resources (ILA, 2004) reinforce this as a principle of customary international law.

There is no ambiguity in the legal standard. There is no military necessity exception for destroying the water supply of 20,000 civilians in a heat wave.

U.S. Central Command did not respond to requests for comment on whether the water facilities were intentionally targeted. The pattern — Qeshm Island in March, Sirik in June — suggests they were.

V. "No Quarter" — A Phrase with a Legal Meaning

Hegseth did not choose his words carelessly. He used the phrase "no quarter" publicly in reference to the Iran war. It is not an idiom. It is a term of art in the law of armed conflict.

Giving "no quarter" means refusing to accept the surrender of enemy combatants — killing them even when they attempt to surrender. It is explicitly prohibited under Article 40 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions and under customary international law. It is a war crime.

Foreign Policy noted in March that Hegseth's invocation of "no quarter" combined with his purge of JAG officers "was clearly intended to set a command climate of more permissive interpretation of the laws of war."

"Make no mistake, illegal orders are where the Trump administration is trending." — Foreign Policy, March 25, 2026

Senior military officers understood what was being signaled. It is why multiple generals and admirals pushed back — and why Hegseth fired them. General Randy George was removed after refusing to strip female and Black troops from promotion lists. A former admiral abruptly retired in December 2025, reportedly over a disagreement about the legality and morality of airstrikes on unarmed vessels. The Chaplain Corps chief was dismissed. The Joint Chiefs chairman, the chief of naval operations, and the Air Force vice chief were all gone before the war started.

The officers who remained were the ones who did not push back.

VI. "Negotiate with Bombs" — Tonight, in Real Time

On June 10, 2026, before the evening strikes began, Pete Hegseth stood at a podium at MacDill Air Force Base and said: "President Trump said we will be hitting Iran hard, and we will be. If we need to negotiate with bombs, we'll negotiate with bombs, and we're very good at it."

The strikes that followed hit Sirik, Jask, Minab, Qeshm Island, and Bandar Abbas. They hit South Pars gas infrastructure. They destroyed the Sirik water reservoirs.

A Qatari mediating delegation departed Tehran with no progress in talks. Trump, speaking from the Oval Office, disclosed what he called a "secret mission" — shepherding commercial oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz with transponders off. He called it proof that "the United States of America controls the Strait of Hormuz — not Iran." A senior military official clarified that the New York Times had reported on this operation weeks earlier. Iran had already known.

U.S. consumer prices rose 4.2 percent in May — the highest inflation rate since April 2023. Three months of war. No deal. Brent crude at $95 per barrel and climbing. The Strait of Hormuz, which historically handled approximately 3,000 ships per month, is now processing roughly 200 per month — those that U.S. forces shepherd through. The other 2,800 have been rerouted, delayed, or blocked.

India summoned a U.S. diplomat to protest U.S. forces striking an oil tanker with Indian crew members aboard — the second such incident in one week. Three crew members remained missing. The UN Secretary General said the ceasefire has become a "lesser-fire."

VII. The Architecture of Impunity

What has happened in Iran since February 28 was not the result of fog of war. It was the result of deliberate institutional construction.

This is not a series of mistakes. Mistakes happen inside systems with error-correction mechanisms. Hegseth removed the error-correction mechanisms first. What came after is not accident. It is output.

The former JAG working group said it plainly: if proper legal guardrails were in place, many of the administration's actions would not have taken place. The guardrails were removed on purpose. The bombs that followed were the point.

The Pentagon IG civilian harm report for the Minab school attack is due June 12, 2026. That is two days from now. It will be released — or it won't be released — on the same day the SpaceX IPO begins trading and the FISA 702 surveillance authority expires.

The administration that bombed a girls' school on day one, destroyed two water systems serving civilians in a heat wave, and fired every lawyer who might have said no, will either account for what it has done or it won't.

The record exists regardless.

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