Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday vowed during a Pentagon press briefing about the ongoing war on Iran that the U.S. would offer “no quarter” to its enemies, which Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) noted, in a rather prescient callback, would “be an illegal order.”
“‘No quarter’ isn’t some wanna be tough guy line — it means something,” Kelly wrote Friday on X. “An order to give no quarter would mean to take no prisoners and kill them instead. That would violate the law of armed conflict. It would be an illegal order.”
He continued, “It would also put American service members at greater risk.”
Hegseth said in his Friday briefing that “We will keep pressing. We will keep pushing, keep advancing, no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.”
Whether the former Fox News host knew it or not, giving the enemy “no quarter” means killing combatants even if they surrender. This is forbidden by most frameworks of international humanitarian law, the Hague and Geneva Conventions.
“It is prohibited to order that there shall be no survivors,” states the Geneva Conventions, with the Hague Convention IV noting it’s illegal “to declare that no quarter will be given.”
Kelly wrote Friday, “Pete Hegseth should know better than to throw around terms like this.”
This is not the first time Kelly has been spotlighted in the discourse about illegal orders. He and five fellow Democratic veteran lawmakers reminded U.S. service members in a video last year that they can legally defy unlawful orders. As a result, Hegseth tried to downgrade Kelly’s retired Navy rank and pension over his “seditious statements.” The video also drew the ire of President Donald Trump, who said it constituted “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” on social media.
Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press
The number of federal personnel tasked with minimizing harm to civilians in war has been notably slashed across the Defense Department since Trump returned to office, and Hegseth himself has indicated an indifference to legally codified rules of engagement.
“No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars,” he said during a press briefing earlier this month. “We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives.”
The Iran war has already cost at least 13 U.S. military service members and more than 1,400 Iranians their lives, including dozens of schoolgirls who were killed in an apparent U.S. airstrike on the war’s first day.
