Hours after reports that U.S. commanders were preparing to disobey presidential orders, Donald Trump announced a two-week ceasefire in Iran war

Iran war draws protesters in Chicago (Chicago Sun-Times)

About noon CDT yesterday, reports began surfacing that a retired general said U.S. commanders were preparing to disobey President Donald Trump's unlawful orders to demolish Iran's civil infrastructure.  About six hours later, Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran, backing down from threats of imminent devastation. 

The big question: Were those two events connected, and if so, what impact might that have on Trump's decision-making going forward?

Trump has developed a reputation as a TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out), and that appears to be what's happening now. But we will have to wait for at least two weeks to see how things play out. This much looks certain: Retired General Mark Hertling is playing a central role in trying to steer Trump clear of his threats to ensure that Iran's "whole civilization would die" if it did not adhere to a U.S. deadline to end the war. From an article yesterday at the UK Mirror under the headline "Trump humiliated as ex-general claims commanders  preparing to disobey Iran war orders": 

A former United States general has made the claim that military commanders are preparing to disobey their commander in chief, President Donald Trump, in relation to the current war in Iran.

Over the past days, rhetoric from both Trump and official channels within the Iranian regime have Trump issuing a deadline for the "demolition" of Iran, including power plants and other civilian infrastructure, which experts say would be illegal under international law.

Late on Monday, retired general Mark Hertling appeared on the US news channel MS Now's Deadline: White House podcast, where he alleged that those in charge of delivering on Trump's orders are considering how to defy him.

Gen. Hertling outlined how he trained for 40 years as a soldier and as a commander of US troops and set out the lawful basis for following orders from the very top of the US government.

"You're primarily loyal to the Constitution. You are also loyal to your superiors if they give... lawful orders," he said.

"If they start giving unlawful orders you find a way to push back and make sure they adjust their approach.

"But you are also loyal to the soldiers who are under your command."

Hertling explained how those three loyalties are sometimes conflicting and expressed how military chiefs will be seriously considering their positions in relation to Trump's threats to Iran's civilian infrastructure, which is against one of the key pillars of the post-WWII Geneva Conventions, of which the US is a signatory.

"They will be saying to themselves, 'I cannot obey an unlawful order, I cannot order things I know are absolutely wrong.'"

A few hours after Hertling's words hit the global press, Trump announced a change of heart regarding the deadline he had set for Iran. The Associated Press reported under the headline "US and Iran agree to a 2-week ceasefire as Trump seizes diplomatic offramp": 

U.S. President Donald Trump pulled back on his threats to launch devastating strikes on Iran late Tuesday, swerving to de-escalate the war less than two hours before the deadline he set for Tehran to capitulate to a deal.

Trump said he was holding off on his threatened attacks on Iranian bridges and power plants, as the U.S. and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire that includes the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. He said Iran has proposed a “workable” 10-point peace plan that could help end the war launched by the U.S. and Israel in February.

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said it has accepted the ceasefire and that it would negotiate with the United States in Islamabad beginning Friday. Neither Iran nor the United States said when the ceasefire would begin, and attacks took place in Israel, Iran and across the Gulf region early Wednesday.

What will happen over the next two weeks? That is unknown, but this is known: Trump has created a dilemma for US. military officers, as spelled out in a report at the UK Guardian: 

Donald Trump’s threats to carry out mass bombing of civilian infrastructure in Iran present US military officers with a dilemma: disobey orders or help commit war crimes. . . . 

“We are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously,” Trump said in prepared remarks that were amplified by the state department’s social media accounts.

There is little debate among legal experts that such an attack on the life-supporting infrastructure for 93 million Iranians would constitute a war crime.

“Such rhetorical statements – if followed through – would amount to the most serious war crimes – and thus the president’s statements place service members in a profoundly challenging situation,” two former judge advocate general (JAG) officers, Margaret Donovan and Rachel VanLandingham wrote on the website Just Security on Monday.

“As former uniformed military lawyers who advised targeting operations, we know the president’s words run counter to decades of legal training of military personnel and risk placing our warfighters on a path of no return.”

They noted that Trump’s boast that he would bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages,” and the order by his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, to show “no quarter, no mercy” were not just “plainly illegal” but they also represented a rupture from the moral and legal principles that US military personnel have been “trained to follow their entire careers.”

Charli Carpenter, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said there were many historical examples of service members questioning orders, refusing to obey, passively disobeying or even intervening to stop war crimes.

She cited as an example US soldiers who refused to take part in the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, including a helicopter pilot who threatened to shoot the perpetrators.

In his court martial, the officer who ordered his men to gun down hundreds of Vietnamese villagers, 2nd Lt William Calley, argued that he was only obeying orders, but the court ruled that was no defence as such orders were “palpably illegal”.

The question is whether officers who potentially carry out orders to bomb Iranian power stations and bridges could argue that they did not know it was “palpably illegal”.

When Democratic members of Congress published a video message in November telling US service members “you can refuse illegal orders, you must refuse illegal orders”, Trump went on Truth Social to accuse them of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH”.

“There are many factors that make it hard to say ‘no’ or stand up to stop war crimes, especially where there are grey areas in the law,” Carpenter said.

“What the law requires of enlisted troops is to disobey only ‘manifestly unlawful’ orders – orders so egregiously unlawful that a person of ordinary understanding would know they were wrong.

“However, this skill and moral judgment is not drilled into troops in the same way they are taught to follow the chain of command and go along with their small units, and troops can also be court-martialed for insubordination if they guess wrong.”