alt Hacker News> Second, "colloquial" definition of a war crime are Geneva convention violations.
The other "colloquial" definition of a war crime is "things we prosecuted the Nazis for at Nuremberg".
One side here is playing "world's police", so this "but those people (that we've painted as fundamentalist extremist terrorists) are committing war crimes so why shouldn't we get to, too?" isn't exactly the fine upstanding argument that you seem to think it is, just as it's not when the IDF responds to children throwing rocks at main battle tanks with live ammunition and turning off the power to a country for three days.
I find it absolutely incredible anyone would choose to use such arguments to defend Iran's islamist regime. Why?Unfortunately every conflict has 2 sides. This is what the side you're defending does:
(man it's difficult to get a list of links into hacker news) (also: stolen from a reddit summary)
Recently, Iran has lowered the entry age into the Iranian military to 12, and they have a long and storied history of using child soldiers in the Iran/Iraq war as suicide bombers - and sending them into minefields tied together with rope to prevent escape, so they could be human minesweepers for tanks and adult soldiers [1].
550,000+ child soldiers were used in the Iran/Iraq war, with over 36,000 as young as NINE years old being killed. Martyrdom is taught in Iranian schools to this day [2].
UNICEF reports 1/5 of ALL marriages in Iran are child marriages. They can legally marry 13 year old girls, and can marry any age with the father’s permission; it’s likely higher than 1/5 as in rural regions it’s common for marriages to not be reported [3].
They just slaughtered 30,000+ civilian protestors in January who were demonstrating against a literal terrorist puppet state who has committed some of the worst human rights atrocities in the world in the span of their 50 year history [4].
Ayatollah Khomeini (Iran’s Supreme Leader) stated virgin women are to be raped prior to their executions (largely for minor acts) so they don’t die a virgin, and justified it through his interpretation of his religion [5].
Here’s Iranian Parliament chanting “Death to America”, which they do constantly [6].
They are directly funding and arming internationally recognized terror groups [7]. Based on Intelligence estimates, Iran-funded terrorist groups have been responsible for thousands of deaths, including hundreds of American personnel, since the 1979 revolution. Major casualties are attributed to Iran-backed proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza, and various Shiite militias in Iraq [8].
And are visibly, via satellite, enriching uranium past 60% which is only used for acquiring nuclear weapons [9].
This is far from a complete list. We're not even discussing that iranian clergy are literally pimping underage girls for sex, which sharia is perfectly fine with (and also happens in other muslim states, including sunni ones) as long as what we'd call the pimp is an imam.
[1] https://www.jns.org/opinion/yoram-ettinger/irans-sickening-u... [2] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/04/iran-recruitm... [3] https://www.girlsnotbrides.org/learning-resources/child-marr... [4] https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-... [5] https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmin... [6] https://youtu.be/GUDLkKmzpeU?si=QiPMeyj8y8gWQfzr [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-sponsored_terro... [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-sponsored_terro... [9] https://www.csis.org/analysis/csis-satellite-imagery-analysi...