The saddest part of the article is the US tried to blow the dam up during the gulf war. Why? That is as brutal as dropping the nukes on Japan.
The quote is: "the dam had been built to survive an aerial bombardment. (In fact, during the Gulf War, American jets bombed its generator, but the dam remained intact.)"
(A dam with bad air defense ought to be an easy target, considering all the emphasis the Americans puts into getting through lots of cement -- and that dams were bombed already during WWII.)
Edit: The shocking part was how the US found out about how much the sanctions had damaged the country -- and then poured billions into fixing it. The US politicians might waste even more than my native ones.
"According to Article 56 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, “works or installations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dikes and nuclear electrical generating stations, shall not be made the object of attack, even when these objects are military objectives, if such attack may cause the release of dangerous forces and consequent severe losses among the civilian population.”
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chastise