As negotiations with Iran have stalled, President Donald Trump has repeatedly resorted to extreme warnings, including comments that sounded like threats of mass destruction. In recent weeks he has suggested that Iran’s “whole civilization” could “die” and that the country might be “blown up,” rhetoric that many observers interpreted as genocidal rather than diplomatic.
Tensions flared again after clashes this week. On May 7, U.S. forces struck military sites they said were connected to attempts to attack three U.S. Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran denounced those strikes as a violation of an existing ceasefire and said its own actions against U.S. vessels were in response to American attacks on Iranian oil tankers the previous day.
When reporters pressed him about the ceasefire, Trump warned that if an agreement was not reached, “you’re just going to have to look at one big glow coming out of Iran,” adding that Iran needed to sign the deal quickly or “they’re going to have a lot of pain.” Many commentators read that as an explicit nuclear threat; others suggested he might have been threatening strikes on civilian energy infrastructure—attacks that would themselves be unlawful and could constitute war crimes.
Critics point out the stark irony of threatening nuclear annihilation while the stated goal of the conflict has been to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, editor-in-chief of Responsible Statecraft, noted that the stance undercuts the ostensible rationale for the war.
Advocacy groups condemned the language. The National Iranian American Council called the idea of making Iran “glow,” whether by nuclear means or other mass-destruction methods, an almost unthinkable threat against 92 million people and warned against normalizing such rhetoric. The group urged officials to consider whether the president is fit to make decisions that could cost innumerable lives and asked whether the chain of command would refuse unlawful orders to carry out mass-casualty attacks.
Earlier threats from Trump, including vows to wipe out Iranian civilization, prompted broad outrage and led dozens of Democratic lawmakers to urge Cabinet officials to consider invoking the 25th Amendment. Critics argue that these statements cannot be dismissed as mere bluster: as long as the president remains in office, he could attempt to act on them, and the possibility of unlawful orders raises urgent legal and moral questions.
Whether framed as nuclear intimidation or threats against critical infrastructure, the recent comments highlight the peril of escalating rhetoric becoming policy. Observers say the war should end and that the president’s repeated threats of war crimes must not be normalized or left unchallenged.
