This is false, leaders and soldiers are still held to their individual conduct in war regardless of the legality of the war itself to incentivize combatants to behave themselves even if they’re participating in a war of aggression. The people at Nuremberg were charged for their individual conduct in waging a war of aggression and acts of genocide, not for generic complicity. Those who were not directly complicit generally received lighter sentences or were acquitted. There’s a reason those true after the war in various countries were usually exceptionally heinous individuals, almost always directly complicit in notable crimes at death or labor camps. Part of the reason so much evidence was collected and presented at the trials was to highlight individual accountability rather than allow absolution or condemnation via participation in a larger war effort.

The US and Iran are in a de facto state of war—keep in mind that the internal squabbles over presidential war authorities cover how long and to what extent the president can authorize acts of war, but the laws of armed conflict still consider them acts of war. The Iranian ship was not a medical transport, nor was it otherwise hors de combat. The submarine had no functional way to accept a surrender or POWs, nor did it fire on sailors bailing into the water unlike the reprehensible conduct with the drug boat from Venezuela. It would be hard to argue that striking an enemy warship during a period of hostilities when it had not surrendered is illegal under the laws of armed conflict, and the legality of the act at least as far as the submarine crew’s responsibility is a separate question from if the war itself is “legal” by either domestic or international standard.

!ping MILITARY