President Donald Trump threatened in a Truth Social post Tuesday that "a whole civilization will die tonight" as the deadline nears for an agreement on a ceasefire in the war with Iran.
The message marks his most extreme public rhetoric to date against the country and comes less than 12 hours before he says the United States will launch attacks on Iran's infrastructure over Tehran's continued disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
"A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again," Trump said in the post. "I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will."
"However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?" Trump wrote, referring to the killings of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other leaders, although it's unclear what the full impact of their deaths has been on Iran's government.
"We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World," Trump continued. "47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!"
The statement sparked a wave of fierce and immediate condemnations from Democrats.
In recent days, the president has made a series of escalatory threats against Tehran, threatening to bomb the country into the “the Stone Ages,” and calling the Iranian government "crazy bastards" while demanding it open up the key shipping route.
Reached for comment on what the president meant by his latest threat and whether "whole civilization" signified that the U.S. would target civilian areas, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said, "refer to the TRUTH."
After extending the deadline multiple times for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route that about a fifth of the world's oil and natural gas usually passes through, the president announced 8 p.m. ET Tuesday as the final deadline for Iran to come to a deal.
In a post Sunday, Trump threatened Iran's power plants and bridges if Iran did not reopen the strait by that Tuesday deadline, using expletives and invoking Islam.
Democrats moved rapidly to denounce Trump’s threats, warning that such strikes would constitute war crimes, and called on largely silent Republican leaders to hold votes to end the Iran war.
“Donald Trump is completely unhinged. His statement threatening to eradicate an entire civilization shocks the conscience and requires a decisive congressional response,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said in a joint statement with his leadership team. “The House must come back into session immediately and vote to end this reckless war of choice in the Middle East before Donald Trump plunges our country into World War III.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and a group of Democratic ranking members of key Senate committees issued a rare joint statement warning Trump that he “must not follow through on this threat.”
“We speak today with one voice and one purpose: to condemn President Trump’s threat to extinguish an entire civilization,” the senators said. “Intentionally destroying the power, water, or basic infrastructure upon which tens of millions of civilians depend to punish the very civilians who suffer at the hands of the Iranian regime would constitute a war crime, a betrayal of the values this nation was founded on, and a moral failure.”
Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., a former CIA analyst, warned that targeting civilians at a mass scale “would be a clear violation of the law of armed conflict as laid out in the Geneva Conventions, as well as the Pentagon’s Law of War Manual,” while reviving her calls for service members to refuse illegal orders.
“I hope and believe our troops — especially those in command — will have the moral clarity to push back if they are given clearly illegal orders,” Slotkin said in a statement.
Meanwhile, most congressional Republicans had little to say in the hours following Trump’s statement. The offices of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., didn’t return messages seeking comment.
The official Senate Republican X account published an unsigned post saying, “Iran would be wise to take President Trump at his word. They can choose the easy way or the hard way.” (The handle is run by the staff of Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.)
Trump spoke to Fox News' Bret Baier by phone on Tuesday morning. "He said 8 p.m. is happening," Baier relayed on air. "That’s what he said. He said it is — if we get to that point, there is going to be an attack like they have not seen. ... Now, he said if negotiations move forward today and there is something concrete, that could change, but at this hour — he didn’t want to put odds on it — but he said it is moving forward with the plans that we have."
The president repeated threats against the country's infrastructure during a Monday news conference, telling reporters that the U.S. has a plan "where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business — burning, exploding and never to be used again."
International law experts have concurred with Democrats that Trump's threats against things like power stations would be potential war crimes if carried out.
“Trump is openly threatening collective punishment, targeting not the Iranian military but the Iranian people,” said Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, noting that collective punishment of civilians during armed conflict is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
“Attacking civilians is a war crime. So is making threats with the aim of terrorizing the civilian population,” he said, explaining that threatening to carry out a war crime is potentially a war crime itself under international humanitarian law.
Some rank-and-file Democratic senators criticized Trump’s post on Tuesday as “completely unstable“ and “unhinged.”
Others, including Sen. Ed Markey, of Massachusetts, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan, called for the president’s impeachment or removal from office.
Across the aisle, former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Trump ally-turned-critic, also called for Trump to be removed through the 25th Amendment.
“25TH AMENDMENT!!!” the Georgia Republican posted on X. “Not a single bomb has dropped on America. We cannot kill an entire civilization. This is evil and madness.”
The 25th Amendment lays out the presidential succession plan, as well as a process for the president to be removed from office by the vice president and members of his Cabinet, potentially with the involvement of Congress, if the president “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
