With threat to wipe out Iran’s civilisation, Trump’s rhetoric goes beyond bluster

Follow our live coverage here.

WASHINGTON – It was a stunning threat that promised to eliminate Iranian civilisation, delivered with all the casual callousness that has become US President Donald Trump’s preferred style of communication.

“A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

And that is what passed as a normal Tuesday-morning update from the Trump White House on April 7: a warning of mass destruction and what international law would define as war crimes, blithely delivered on Truth Social, posted alongside ads for bullet-shaped pens, patriotic hats and a gala dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Mr Trump’s Florida estate.

“However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?” Mr Trump wrote in his message. “We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”

The message arrived two days after Mr Trump marked Easter Sunday by calling on the Iranians to end its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz: “Open the F*****’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah,” he wrote.

In the minds of the President and his supporters, the post is all part of Mr Trump’s chaotic negotiation style, intended to prompt an end to his self-inflicted conflict and persuade Tehran to open the strait. Some of the President’s advisers saw Mr Trump’s escalating rhetoric as a negotiating tactic that suggested he was more interested in finding a way out of the war than following through with a devastating attack.

On the evening of April 7, Mr Trump had toggled back to diplomat mode, announcing that he had agreed to a proposal by Pakistan that calls for a two-week ceasefire and the immediate opening of the Strait of Hormuz.

The President said that the United States would work on finalising an agreement with Iran. “It is an Honor to have this Longterm problem close to resolution,” he wrote.

Even for Mr Trump, who has a long history of comments that fly far beyond the pale, his latest comments bear the mark of an impulsive leader who is used to getting his way through coercion and unpredictability but who is not getting his way now.

Historian Alex Wellerstein, who studies nuclear conflicts, said that even if Mr Trump does not carry out the extent of his threat, the President’s violent rhetoric damages his credibility as a negotiator and his country’s standing in the world.

“You’re talking about a world that largely increasingly sees the United States as unhinged and dangerous, and not a reliable partner,” he said, “where all of the countries that typically align with democracy and freedom are on the other side of the United States”.

Some of Mr Trump’s most fervent supporters have joined the usual chorus of critics in recent days. Mr Tucker Carlson, the right-wing podcaster, said that the President’s Easter message had “shattered” the holiest day on the Christian calendar.

“It is vile on every level,” Mr Carlson said on his podcast. “It begins with a promise to use the US military, our military, to destroy civilian infrastructure in another country – which is to say, to commit a war crime, a moral crime against the people of the country, whose welfare, by the way, was one of the reasons we supposedly went into this war in the first place.”

The President responded by calling Carlson a “low IQ person” and continuing on with his war. Ever a reality television producer, Mr Trump is trying to program this war like he does everything else – through cliffhangers and wait-and-see diplomacy. As such, Mr Trump created an 8pm Eastern deadline for April 7 for Tehran to comply. Mr Trump announced “a double sided CEASEFIRE” about 90 minutes before his self-imposed deadline.

Americans have seen versions of this playbook before: Mr Trump makes increasingly escalatory threats, secures some semblance of a deal and walks away declaring victory. In January, Mr Trump threatened to send in US forces to capture the Danish territory of Greenland. He settled for an agreement to increase the number of US troops there.

With Iran, though, there is still little evidence that Mr Trump is going to ultimately get what he wants. Brigadier-General Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesperson for the Iranian military, has said that Iran would retaliate “crushingly and extensively” if its civilian infrastructure were attacked.

Even with a ceasefire, Mr Trump is far from achieving his larger strategic objectives.

The President’s increasingly violent messaging betrays a degree of frustration that he has not gotten what he wanted after pushing back an earlier deadline to barrage the country’s infrastructure. His threats to level power plants and oil installations and bridges have seemed to have the opposite effect on some Iranians, who have formed human chains around points of infrastructure that support civilian life.

Even some people who have supported Mr Trump in the past see his strategy on Iran, to the extent that there is one, as damaging and dangerous.

“Trump believes he is threatening Iran with destruction, but it is America that now stands in danger,” Mr Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned in March, wrote on the social platform X.

“If he attempts to eradicate Iranian civilization, the United States will no longer be viewed as a stabilising force in the world, but as an agent of chaos – effectively ending our status as the world’s greatest superpower.” NYTIMES