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Axios AM: Warfare’s new era
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View in browser PRESENTED BY OPENAI Axios AMBy Mike Allen · Mar 31, 2026 Happy Tuesday! Smart Brevity™ count: 1,909 words … 7 mins. Thanks to Noah Bressner for orchestrating. Edited by Andrew Pantazi and Bill Kole. Bulletin: Early this morning, the average U.S. price of a gallon of regular gas jumped past an average of $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022. It’s now $4.02 — over a dollar more than when the war began. Keep reading. 1 big thing: Era of unshackled warfare  Photo illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images President Trump’s threat to bomb Iran’s water supply would constitute his most dramatic breach of the laws and norms designed to protect civilians in wartime, Axios’ Zachary Basu and Dave Lawler write. Why it matters: The Iran war is the biggest test of what Trump’s contempt for “politically correct” war-fighting looks like in practice. His administration has already signed off on Israeli assassinations of political leaders, threatened “no quarter” for enemy combatants, and initially rejected responsibility for a mass-casualty strike on an elementary school. But the U.S. has been almost exclusively targeting Iran’s military and nuclear program up to now. The threat to hit civilian infrastructure shows how intent Trump is on finding ways to increase the pressure on Tehran, even if that means flouting the generally accepted principles of warfare.  The big picture: Trump criticized the Geneva Conventions during his 2016 campaign, lamenting that soldiers were “afraid to fight.” He vowed to bring back waterboarding and “a hell of a lot worse. “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, then a Fox News host, spent Trump’s first term lobbying privately and on air to secure pardons for soldiers convicted of war crimes. Zoom in: With the Iran war now entering its second month, Trump threatened yesterday to “completely [obliterate]” Iran’s power plants, oil wells and “possibly all desalinization plants” if a deal isn’t reached soon. Like other countries in the severely water-stressed region, Iran relies heavily on desalinated water. A senior U.S. official told Axios the idea was to use strikes to pressure Iran to negotiate: “The Iranians want this to stop, too. Don’t be mistaken. Their economy is broken. A couple of sorties, they will have no power. A couple of Israeli sorties, they will have no water. There is a lot to lose if there’s no accommodation. Everyone will have to give, but we can get there. “The official cautioned that Trump has made no decision, and “he wants to make sure that things are proportionate in this war.”  Between the lines: International humanitarian law explicitly prohibits attacks on objects indispensable to civilian survival, including drinking water installations. Power plants, by contrast, can be deemed lawful targets if they serve a military purpose. Trump stated his intent plainly, writing that the strikes would be “in retribution for our many soldiers” Iran has killed over the last 47 years. Reprisals against civilians — also known as collective punishment — are explicitly prohibited under the Geneva Conventions. |
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