Clooney Calls Trump Iran Threat a War Crime
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- George Clooney told 3,000 high school students in Cuneo, Italy on Wednesday that Donald Trump's threat to Iran that "a whole civilization will die tonight" constitutes a war crime, at an event organized by the Clooney Foundation for Justice.
- Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, told the Independent that "The only person committing war crimes is George Clooney for his awful movies and terrible acting ability."
- Clooney responded to Deadline citing the Genocide Convention and Rome Statute, defining a war crime as "intent to physically destroy a nation," and asked the administration: "What is the administration's defense?"
- Trump has repeatedly attacked Clooney's acting, calling him a "second-rate movie star," a "third-rate actor," and a "backstabber," and in January criticized France's decision to grant the actor and his family citizenship.
- Clooney told Variety last year he was once on good terms with Trump before his presidency, saying Trump "used to call me a lot" and "tried to help me get into a hospital once to see a back surgeon," adding "That all changed."
- Clooney, a longtime Democratic donor, wrote a 2024 New York Times op-ed urging then-President Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race and has framed his outspokenness as a moral responsibility tied to his journalist father and his wife, the human rights lawyer Amal Clooney.
Why it matters: Clooney cited the Genocide Convention and Rome Statute — the legal frameworks used in international war crimes prosecutions — to argue Trump's rhetorical threat to Iran meets the legal threshold of a war crime. The White House's response attacked Clooney's acting record rather than addressing the legal definition he put on the record, leaving the underlying question about the Iran threat's standing under international law unanswered.
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