A top Democratic lawmaker with military experience reacted strongly to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s call for “no quarter” for America’s enemies during a Friday news conference at the Pentagon, calling such an order — if followed by troops — a possible violation of international law.
U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona posted Friday on
Kelly added: “That would violate the law of armed conflict. It would be an illegal order. It would also put American service members at greater risk. Pete Hegseth should know not to use terms like this.”
According to a transcript of the briefing, Hegseth said, “We will continue to press, we will continue to press, we will continue to advance, no quarter, no mercy for our enemy.”
Hegseth’s critics say that the phrase “no quarter” is more than a belligerent figure of speech, implying that enemy combatants will not be taken prisoner but executed. Under the 1899 Hague Convention, this is considered a war crime.
An amendment to the convention, from 1907, states that “it is especially prohibited… to declare that no quarter will be given.”
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), “world humanitarian law prohibits the use of this procedure, that is, ordering that there be no survivors, threatening the adversary with this or conducting hostilities on this basis.”
The ICRC’s international humanitarian law database says that, according to the statute of the international criminal court, “declaring that no quarter shall be given” is a war crime in international armed conflicts.
Hegseth’s use of the phrase came amid a wide-ranging briefing during which he claimed that Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is injured and likely disfigured. The defense secretary also questioned Khamenei’s ability to govern.
“We know that the new, so-called not-so-supreme leader is injured and probably disfigured,” Hegseth said. “Yesterday he issued a statement. A weak one, actually, but there was no voice or video. It was a written statement.”
An Iranian official told Reuters on Wednesday that Khamenei’s injuries were minor. On Friday, Iran’s ambassador to Japan, Peyman Saadat, said Khamenei had not been “harmed.”
Kelly’s criticism of Hegseth’s comment comes amid a war of words between the two veterans that has spilled into the courtroom.
In November, Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers appeared in a video urging troops to disobey illegal military directives from Donald Trump’s administration.
The president accused lawmakers of sedition “punishable by DEATH” in a social media post. And Hegseth called for Kelly’s demotion from the senator’s rank of retired captain.
The Pentagon subsequently began investigating Kelly, citing a federal law that allows retired service members to be recalled to active duty by order of the Secretary of Defense for a possible court-martial.
But a judge ruled in February that he knew of no U.S. Supreme Court precedent that justified the Pentagon’s censure of a U.S. senator and was skeptical of the arguments presented by a government lawyer, asking if they weren’t “a bit far-fetched.”
