Washington (AFP)

US Foreign Minister Mike Pompeo Hammered On Sunday That The United States Would Respect "International Law" After Donald Trump's Threat To Hit Iranian Cultural Sites a "war crime".

The US president has threatened on Twitter to target 52 sites if the Islamic Republic reacts militarily to "avenge" the death of powerful general Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in Iraq on Friday by an American strike.

These 52 sites - in symbolic homage to the number of Americans held hostage, from the end of 1979, at the United States Embassy in Tehran - would be "of a very high level and very important for Iran and for Iranian culture, "he said.

Targeting cultural sites would constitute a "war crime", reacted not only the head of Iranian diplomacy Mohammad Javad Zarif but also many voices indignant in the United States, led by the Democratic opposition.

Internet users were posting images of emblematic historic places in Iran, which has around twenty UNESCO World Heritage sites, including the ancient city of Bam and the old bazaar of Tabriz.

- "Immoral" threat -

In a frenzied tour of the big American mornings on Sunday, Mike Pompeo set out to emphasize, without overtly contradicting the American president, that Washington would respect the "framework of the law".

"The Americans must know that we will always defend them and we will do so while respecting international law and the American Constitution," he said on CNN. On ABC, he added: "any target that we could hit would be a legal target".

Refusing to specify which sites were already identified, the American diplomat said he was "certain that the Defense Ministry continues to define options".

What to save an exit door?

Reactions were in any case in the United States, where legal experts, former diplomats and members of the Democratic opposition cited international conventions and American law to denounce the prospect of "war crimes".

For Nicholas Burns, American ambassador to NATO under Republican President George W. Bush, the threat from Donald Trump "is immoral and goes against American values".

Now a professor at Harvard University, he pointed out that the Trump administration had supported a resolution intended to prevent the Islamic State (IS) group from destroying World Heritage sites, such as the ancient city of Palmyra, in Syria. .

Mohammad Javad Zarif drew a parallel between the threats of Donald Trump and IS.

"A reminder to those who hallucinate dreaming of imitating IS war crimes by targeting our cultural heritage: for millennia in our history, barbarians came and ravaged our cities, razed our monuments and burned our libraries, "he tweeted.

"Where are they today? We're still here."

Others compared these threats to the Taliban's destruction in March 2001 of the giant Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, well placed in the Democratic primary to nominate the candidate who will challenge Donald Trump during the presidential election in November, responded directly to the president's message on Twitter:

"You are threatening to commit war crimes. We are not at war with Iran. The Americans do not want a war with Iran."

But a former senior American official was more skeptical.

"It seems to me hard to believe that the Pentagon would provide Trump with targets that would include Iranian cultural sites," tweeted Colin Kahl, former security adviser to Democratic Vice President Joe Biden.

"Trump may not care about the laws of war, but officials and lawyers of the (Defense Ministry) do not ... Targeting cultural sites is a war crime."

© 2020 AFP