The United States woke up Tuesday to its president threatening to literally wipe out an entire country via social media.
But since President Donald Trump is a whirling dervish of unchecked impulses, no one knows if he means it. So the Iranian people get to spend the day in a horrifying limbo, hoping against hope that Trump will reverse course.
Republicans are trying to spin Trump’s remarks as hyperbole, floating that maybe by saying, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” what he really means is that he’s just threatening a slightly less war crime-y war crime: targeting Iran’s infrastructure.
A bridge struck by U.S. airstrikes is seen in the town of Karaj, Iran on April 3.
But Trump’s Truth Social post is pretty plain, even with the unhinged ending of “God Bless the Great People of Iran.”
This is horrifying on its face, but there’s an added layer of dystopia here, which is that we all have a knee-jerk impulse to believe that Trump won’t actually follow through on his threat.
We’ve been lulled into this response—whether deliberately or accidentally—as Trump follows a consistent pattern of vowing destruction only to walk things back later.
Trump first promised to “hit and obliterate [Iran’s] various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!” in a Truth Social post on March 21. He then backed down on March 23, claiming that he was now negotiating with Iran, which Iran said was not true.
Trump then gave Iran five days to open the Strait of Hormuz, bragging that his crack team of Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner were on it, sure to hammer out a peace deal.
Reader, they were not on it. Indeed, no one could say who Witkoff and Kushner were talking to, or whether any talks actually happened.
On March 26, or smack dab in the middle of the five-day “negotiation,”, Trump returned to Truth Social to ramp up his threats again: “They better get serious soon, before it is too late, because once that happens, there is NO TURNING BACK, and it won’t be pretty!”
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Later that same day, he extended his deadline by another 10 days, set to expire on April 6, declaring that things were now “going very well.”
But then Trump declared on March 30 that, while there had been “great progress,” if Iran didn’t open the Strait of Hormuz, “we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched.’”
Masterful gambit, sir. Truly a genius at negotiations.
Residents observe flames and smoke rising from an oil storage facility following a U.S.–Israeli strike in Tehran, Iran on March 7.
Then on April 4, Trump boasted that time was running out, giving Iran 48 hours—or until April 6—before “all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD!”
And, of course, there was his Easter Truth Social post, declaring that Tuesday would be “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
No one knows why Iran got an extra day. Did Trump forget about Monday? Can he not do basic math? Is he convinced that Kushner is in high-level peace talks again?
Regardless, we now have Tuesday’s open and genocidal threat—the worst that Trump has issued thus far—and the only hope we can cling to is that he will back down yet again.
Because none of our leaders are willing to stop Trump, the world is in the grips of a madman. This is no way to live.
