Trump Threatens to Kill Thousands More Iranians in Unnerving Tirades |
Trump Threatens to Kill Thousands More Iranians in Unnerving Tirades
In a blunt warning, Senator Chris Murphy tells us that “everybody in that chain of command has to think hard” about carrying out such a hideously inhumane order, which he described as “war crimes.”
Donald Trump is threatening to bomb Iran’s power plants in order to send that country “back to the stone ages,” as he has put it. Trump’s tendency to wrap sociopathic expressions of sadism and bloodlust in such cartoonish language has unleashed a lot of parsing of his intentions: Surely it’s just designed to bluff Iran into reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Perhaps he’s hyperbolically describing a more limited bombing plan. Or maybe he’s just venting.
But instead of sifting through clues to Trump’s “real” designs, let’s take him at his word, and ask a more basic question: What would actually happen on the ground in Iran if Trump did bomb its power plants? How bad an atrocity would this be? According to experts on war, energy, and foreign affairs that I interviewed, the answer is: much, much worse than you might think.
Trump’s threat has grown more unhinged over time. On Sunday, he rage-posted that “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day,” adding: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in hell.” He then declared that Iran’s deadline to do his bidding will be eight o’clock on Tuesday night. In a subsequent interview, Trump snarled that Iran will “lose every power plant” in “the whole country.” Trump followed up early Tuesday with his most vile tirade yet, warning that if he doesn’t get his way, “a whole civilization will die.”
The specific vow to target “every” plant is critical. Because this (along with the threat of civilizational erasure) inescapably means bombing many plants that power the daily lives of Iran’s 93 million people, it leaves little doubt that Trump is threatening to violate international laws that prohibit the targeting of civilian-oriented infrastructure, as opposed to civilian sites used by the military.
“We’ve never had a U.S. president so proudly promise to........