· · · ·

Open Letter Urges US, Israel to Warn Civilians Before IRGC Strikes

Law-STEM fellows urge the US and Israel to warn civilians before IRGC strikes. We checked every Geneva and ICRC rule the open letter cites.

ByPeter Peters
Open bound treaty volume with handwritten pages, signatures and red wax seals on a display stand
Facsimile of the original 1864 Geneva Convention, Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum, Geneva. Photo by Kevin Quinn (CC BY 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons.

Advocacy letter, explained. The text examined here is an open letter by the Law-STEM fellows of herascend.org. It is advocacy, not a Peter’s World opinion. Each legal citation in it was checked against the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) databases on Oct 13, 2026.

A group of law and science fellows has published an open letter titled “An Urgent Plea: Protect Children, Patients, and Civilians.” It is addressed “To the U.S. Department of War and the Israeli Prime Minister” and asks both to take every feasible step to spare civilians before any further strike on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It also asks them to press the IRGC to stop its alleged use of schools and hospitals for military purposes.

The letter arrives more than seven months after the United States and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, according to Anadolu Agency. No ceasefire is in place, as the Iran War Tracker shows.

What the letter asks

The plea makes four requests, each tied to a legal source:

  1. Advance warnings. “Please give children time to leave their classrooms, families a chance to reach safety, and hospitals the means to protect patients,” the authors write. They ask for “clear, effective advance warnings to nearby schools and communities, with sufficient time and safe evacuation options wherever feasible.”
  2. Core targeting rules. The authors call for “distinction, proportionality, target verification, and feasible precautions,” and for attacks to be cancelled or suspended when “the target is unlawful or expected civilian harm would be excessive.” They add: “Warnings never erase these obligations.”
  3. The IRGC’s alleged conduct. The letter describes “the IRGC’s alleged exploitation of civilian installations—including hospitals and schools—for military missions.” It asks both governments to demand that the IRGC stop any such conduct and never use civilians as human shields, and it calls for independent investigation of the allegations.
  4. Hospitals. “Hospitals must never become command centers, weapons stores, or shields for military operations,” the letter says, adding that treating wounded combatants does not remove their protection.

It closes: “Children and patients cannot choose where armed forces operate. Give them warning, time, and a safe chance to live.”

Checking the citations

Peter’s World compared every reference with the ICRC’s texts. All of them point to the correct rule or article. Three need context.

  • Advance warning. Customary IHL Rule 20 and Additional Protocol I, Article 57(2)(c) both require “effective advance warning” of attacks that may affect civilians, “unless circumstances do not permit.” The letter’s line that a warning “must give people a meaningful chance to survive” is the authors’ reading of “effective,” not treaty wording, and the exception for circumstances is not mentioned in the letter.
  • Targeting rules. Rules 1 and 7 set out distinction. Rule 14 bans attacks expected to cause excessive incidental harm. Rules 15 to 18 cover precautions, target verification, choice of weapons and assessment of effects. Rule 19 requires cancelling or suspending an attack in exactly the cases the letter names. The phrase “warnings never erase these obligations” is not written in these rules; the closest treaty text is Article 51(8) of Additional Protocol I, which says one side’s violations do not release the other from its duties toward civilians.
  • Defenders’ duties. Rule 23 and Rule 24 require parties to avoid placing military objectives in populated areas and to move civilians away from them; Article 58 is the treaty version. Rule 97 prohibits human shields, as does Article 51(7).
  • Hospitals. Geneva Convention IV, Article 18 protects civilian hospitals. Article 19 says protection ends only if a hospital is used “to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy,” and only “after due warning has been given” with a reasonable time limit. It confirms that nursing wounded soldiers is not such an act. These articles cover civilian hospitals only; military medical units fall under other rules, such as Customary Rule 28.

Which rules bind whom. The ICRC’s list of states party shows that the United States and Iran signed Additional Protocol I in 1977 but never ratified it, and Israel is not listed. The Protocol’s articles therefore do not bind these three states as treaty law. The ICRC study classifies every customary rule the letter cites as binding in international armed conflicts regardless of treaty status, and all three states are parties to the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

The name of the department. “Department of War” has been an authorized secondary title of the Department of Defense since a September 2025 executive order. The House voted to make it the statutory name in July, but the Senate has not passed the bill, PBS reported, so the legal name is still the Department of Defense.

The record behind the claims

The letter’s phrase “as in the past” refers to warnings issued earlier in the war. On March 13, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told residents of Tehran’s Villa and Monirieh areas and Qazvin’s Lia industrial zone to leave before strikes, Ynet and Iran International reported. “Your presence in this area endangers your lives,” IDF Persian-language spokesman Kamal Penhasi said, in a statement translated by Ynet.

The allegation about civilian sites also has official sources. U.S. Central Command said on March 8 that “the Iranian regime is using heavily populated civilian areas to conduct military operations,” Iran International reported. Penhasi told the outlet that Iran “tries to conceal its military assets and weapons behind people,” including in hospitals, schools and mosques. An Iran International investigation said security forces moved into at least 70 civilian sites, 34 of them schools, between March 2 and 14.

Iranian officials have denied using civilians as shields and accuse Israel of targeting civilian infrastructure. No independent body has published findings on the allegations, which is the inquiry the letter requests.

What it means: The letter’s legal footing is sound. Its practical demands, including warnings that leave time to evacuate and hospitals that are spared, track rules that bind all parties as customary law, whichever side’s conduct is in question.

For background on the IRGC and its history, see Iran’s history. Daily coverage of the conflict is in the War Room.

Sources

Additional sources

Related coverage

Recommended articles