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- President Donald J. Trump oversees Operation Epic Fury at Mar-a-Lago on February 28, 2026. Rawpixel.com / Shutterstock The Iran War becomes more senseless, and profoundly more dangerous, with each passing day. This was a war that, as we documented shortly before it began, was never explained to the American people in any meaningful way. That is likely why a large majority have opposed this war from the start, with opposition growing each week. Now, in the war’s sixth full week, we stand on the precipice of dangers unseen for at least two decades.
All of this was not only predictable but explicitly and repeatedly predicted. And this is presumably why Trump’s decade-old vows not to involve the U.S. in any new Middle East wars resonated with so many Americans. Even those who pay minimal attention to American politics understand how often the country has been lied into wars, how every promise made about these wars ends up unfulfilled, and how the country’s energy, resources, and attention are all drained away from American communities and the lives of American citizens, instead filling the coffers of Raytheon and Palantir with one pointless and self-destructive war after the next.
Trump’s threats to completely destroy Iran — not “the regime,” but the country itself and the 93 million people who live there — have been repeated since the start. But they are becoming increasingly psychotic and deranged. In one of the most twisted and morally repugnant statements an American president has ever made — and the bar there is quite high — Trump took to the social media platform he owns this morning to issue this monstrous and definitional vow of genocide: -
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- I am aware that some find this to be a clever and cunning strategy. “Oh, it’s just the Madman Principle,” some say. “Read the Art of the Deal! This is how Trump wins,” say others. “This is Peace Through Strength,” the most Orwellian among us insist, perverting Reagan’s slogan (that massive military build-ups avert wars) into some deceitful formulation whereby war itself is somehow actually peace.
Leaving aside the question of whether Trump actually wrote the “Art of the Deal” book and other questions related to his past success, tactics that are permissible or effective in New York real estate deals and reality-television negotiations are not necessarily permissible or effective in major warfare. I have long maintained that the word “terrorism” has little or no fixed meaning, and thus can be easily manipulated to apply or not apply to anyone or anything. But if the word has any coherent meaning at all, threatening to permanently eradicate “a whole civilization” must be centrally included.
Despite the efforts of some to pretend that Trump’s statement this morning merely constituted a standard threat against Iran’s “regime,” the words he published leave no doubt about his meaning. The word “civilization” does not refer to a government and never has.
The only major “civilization” in Iran is the Persian civilization, which has existed for thousands of years and has produced — and continues to produce — some of humanity’s greatest accomplishments in math, science, art, architecture, politics, law, and more. Beyond that, Trump explicitly said this morning that Iran already has “complete and total regime change where different, smarter and less radical minds prevail,” making it beyond obvious that his threats are not directed at the allegedly “new” and improved Iranian government but — as he put it — at their civilization itself. If you want to defend Trump’s genocidal threat, at least do so based on what he said and meant, not some fabricated, anodyne alternative that is more comfortable.
Beyond all that, this morning’s Trump Social post was far from Trump’s only threat of this sort. That Trump previously threatened to blow up all of Iran’s power plants and bridges — Read more