The legal review of military targets inside the US armed forces operates on a fundamentally different principle than most civilians imagine. Lawyers participate, but they do not hold a veto - and the safeguards that once checked a commander's judgment have been systematically weakened.
As "Hvylya" reports, citing The Economist, a former American commander described the dynamic in blunt terms. A lawyer reviewing targets "doesn't say 'You can't do that,'" the commander explained. "He says: 'You can do that, but here are the consequences.' At the end of the day, the ultimate lawyer is the commander."
In CENTCOM's targeting pipeline, which runs out of Tampa, Florida, the process begins with an intelligence directorate that produces a database of thousands of possible targets drawn from satellite images, signals intelligence and other sources. A "weaponeer" matches munitions to targets. Lawyers review the selections - but in an advisory capacity, not a binding one. The strategy directorate assembles the results into a coherent war plan, which the operations team breaks into air tasking orders looking two days ahead.
Under Pete Hegseth, America's secretary of war, even this limited legal framework has been further eroded. Hegseth has fired military lawyers, loosened rules of engagement and made clear he views legal constraints as obstacles to combat effectiveness. The Pentagon's civilian-harm assessment personnel have been cut by 90%, and the CENTCOM civilian-harm team now runs at one-third of its former strength. Analysts have linked this approach to a broader shift in American war doctrine that explicitly deprioritizes post-strike consequences.
The consequences of this approach are already measurable. Almost 1,800 people have been killed in Iran so far, most of them civilians, according to HRANA, a Washington-based human-rights monitor. On February 28 alone, 175 people - most of them children - died when a girls' school in Minab was hit by what the Pentagon later determined was a targeting mistake. The erosion of legal guardrails comes at a moment when prominent analysts warn the war must end in weeks or risk spiraling into catastrophe.
Also read: Breaking 25 Years of U.S. Doctrine: What Trump Really Thinks About Chaos in Iran.