Trump says Iran would be 'totally wiped out as a country' if it retaliates

Bazzi argues threats are normalizing mass violence

Donald Trump told a Fox News correspondent that Iran would be “totally wiped out as a country” if it retaliated for the latest wave of U.S. airstrikes, Guardian US columnist Mohamad Bazzi wrote. The conditional threat came as the United States and Iran fought around the Strait of Hormuz last week.

Bazzi reported that the warning generated few headlines, even during what he described as a relatively slow news week by Trump administration standards. He wrote that Trump has issued such warnings so often during the past six months of the war against Iran that they barely register.

Bazzi argued that the threats have real-world consequences. He wrote that other western leaders and news organizations often treat Trump’s vows to obliterate Iran as routine expressions of his bravado and unpredictability. Bazzi said that response is desensitizing U.S. and western societies and making large-scale violence, including attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, seem more acceptable as warfare.

Trump has regularly paired the warnings with promises to devastate Iranian infrastructure by destroying bridges and power plants, Bazzi wrote. He reported that attacks of that kind would constitute war crimes under international law.

Bazzi traced the pattern to the early weeks of the war. He wrote that it became clear the United States would not achieve the quick military victory Trump had hoped for. In a primetime White House address on 1 April, Trump threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”

On 6 April, Trump said Iran “could be taken out in one night” and said the United States had a plan to destroy every bridge and power plant in the country. Trump said the infrastructure would be left “burning, exploding, and never to be used again.” Bazzi characterized that statement as announcing an intention to commit war crimes.

Trump set a deadline of 8 p.m. ET on 7 April for Iranian leaders to comply with his demands. As he vacillated between agreeing to a ceasefire and ordering more intense bombing, and as the deadline neared, Trump posted on his Truth Social network: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

Bazzi characterized that statement as a threat to carry out large-scale war crimes against a country of 90 million people. He wrote that it prompted outrage around the world and condemnation from the UN secretary general and the pope.

Some human rights experts argued that Trump’s statement may constitute a threat to commit genocide. The UN Genocide Convention defines genocide as acts committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

In the days before the statement, Trump had warned that the United States would destroy Iran’s infrastructure unless Iran reopened the Strait of Hormuz, Bazzi wrote. A fifth of the world’s oil and liquid gas supplies flowed through the waterway before Tehran effectively shut it at the start of the war.

Shortly before Trump’s deadline expired, Pakistan’s prime minister announced that the United States and Iran had agreed to an immediate ceasefire. Bazzi wrote that Trump never apologized or retracted his statement, and argued that the absence of consequences reflected a wider period of impunity in which threats or acts of genocide bring no consequences.

In July, Trump said the United States would bomb one Iranian bridge or power plant in retaliation each time Iran fired at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz. Bazzi described the bridges and power plants as civilian targets and said such retaliation would be a war crime. He argued that Trump has made such threats seem mundane and a normal part of warfare. Bazzi concluded that Americans and the rest of the world should call Trump out over his threats.

Bazzi connected that desensitization to Israel’s war in Gaza. He wrote that intense aerial bombardment causing massive civilian casualties and displacement had inured many in the western world to what he described as wholesale atrocities.

The normalization of what Bazzi described as Israel’s atrocities in Gaza has rippled across the world, including into the expanding regional war that engulfed Iran and the United States, he wrote. Bazzi said it has also diluted international outrage at Trump’s threats within a period of months: Trump’s April warning that “a whole civilization will die” prompted global condemnation, while subsequent rhetoric barely registered.

Bazzi argued that Trump’s threat to obliterate Iran partly reflects a new international order that emerged over the past three years. During that period, the United States supplied Israel with billions of dollars in weapons and protected it as Israel carried out what Bazzi characterized as a genocidal war in Gaza. Bazzi also argued that Trump has taken advantage of a nascent global order in which western leaders destroyed decades of international norms and the façade of the rule of law to enable Israel to continue its bloodshed in Gaza and, more recently, in Lebanon. In his second term, Bazzi wrote, Trump has behaved “more erratically and like an autocrat drunk with power.”

Most western powers and leaders have become numb to the loss and suffering of Palestinians, Iranians, Lebanese people and others in the Middle East, Bazzi wrote. He concluded that for as long as numbness and impunity continue, it will become normal for a U.S. president to threaten the wholesale destruction of societies and civilizations.

Trump can be dismissed as an unpredictable, or even irrational, world leader who scorns global institutions and norms — the epitome of the “madman theory” of U.S. foreign policy, Bazzi wrote. He argued, however, that the current period of impunity began before Trump returned to office in early 2025, with Biden paving the way.

Joe Biden and other western leaders provided unwavering support to Israel after the Hamas attacks in October 2023 and defied and weakened international law to shield Israel, Bazzi wrote. He said they did so long before Trump returned to office.

For 15 months, Bazzi wrote, the Biden administration undermined global institutions, including the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, to help Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu avoid consequences for what Bazzi described as war crimes in Gaza.

Bazzi argued that Biden and other western leaders rendered international law meaningless through their inaction and obstruction in Gaza. He wrote that their conduct paved the way for Trump to abandon the rhetoric of human rights and the rule of law.

Trump prefers to flaunt U.S. military power and his ability to inflict massive destruction on U.S. enemies, Bazzi wrote.

Bazzi is a Guardian US columnist, director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies and a journalism professor at New York University.