US President Donald Trump's repeated threats to "totally wipe out" Iran are normalizing mass violence and desensitizing Western societies to large-scale atrocities, according to Mohamad Bazzi, a Guardian US columnist and director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University.
In an interview with a Fox News correspondent last week, Trump said Iran would be "totally wiped out as a country" if it retaliated for the latest wave of US air strikes, as the US and Iran fought around the Strait of Hormuz. The threat generated few headlines, even during a relatively slow news week by Trump administration standards.
Frequent threats and their consequences
Trump has delivered this kind of warning so frequently over the past six months of his war against Iran that it hardly registers anymore, Bazzi wrote. But he cautioned against normalizing Trump's threats, which are usually accompanied by promises to devastate Iran's infrastructure – vowing to destroy bridges and power plants. Those kinds of attacks would constitute war crimes under international law.
The president's repeated vows to obliterate Iran are usually written off by other Western leaders and the news media as typical of Trump's bravado and unpredictability, but they have real-world consequences. By treating Trump's rhetoric as normal, US and Western societies are becoming more desensitized to the idea of large-scale violence – including the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure – as a legitimate kind of warfare. Israel's war on Gaza has also inured many in the Western world to wholesale atrocities, including intense aerial bombardment that leads to massive civilian casualties and displacement.
Escalating apocalyptic rhetoric
Trump set the stage for apocalyptic threats against Iran weeks into the war, when it became clear that the US would not achieve the quick military victory he was hoping for. On 7 April, as he vacillated between agreeing to a ceasefire and ordering even more intense bombing, Trump ominously declared in a social media post: "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again."
In the days leading up to that statement, Trump had issued a series of warnings that the US would destroy Iran's infrastructure unless it reopened the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil and liquid gas supplies flowed before Tehran effectively shut the waterway at the start of the war. On 1 April, in a primetime address from the White House, Trump threatened to bomb Iran "back to the Stone Ages, where they belong". On 6 April, Trump claimed that Iran "could be taken out in one night" and said the US had a plan to destroy every bridge and power plant in the country, leaving that infrastructure "burning, exploding, and never to be used again" – a statement announcing his intention to commit war crimes.
Trump set a deadline of 8 pm ET on 7 April for Iranian leaders to comply with his demands. As that deadline neared, Trump shared his now infamous post on his Truth Social network that promised to erase Iran's civilization. That threat to carry out large-scale war crimes against a country of 90 million people prompted outrage around the world, with 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, which is defined by the UN's Genocide Convention as acts committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".
International impunity and the role of Western leaders
Shortly before Trump's deadline expired, Pakistan's prime minister announced that the US and Iran had agreed to an immediate ceasefire. But Trump never apologized or retracted his statement. In today's world, there are no consequences for threatening – or carrying out – a genocide, Bazzi argued.
Trump's threat to obliterate Iran is partly a manifestation of a new international order that emerged over the past three years, as the US supplied billions of dollars in weapons and protected Israel as it carried out a genocidal war in Gaza. In his second term, Trump has behaved more erratically and like an autocrat drunk with power. But he has also taken advantage of a nascent global order, in which Western leaders destroyed decades of international norms and the façade of rule of law – all to enable Israel to continue its bloodshed in Gaza, and more recently, in Lebanon.
As they did with Gaza, most Western powers and leaders have become numb to the loss and suffering of Palestinians, Iranians, Lebanese and others in the Middle East. As long as this numbness and impunity continue, it will become normal for the US president to threaten whole-scale destruction of societies and civilizations, as Trump has done in Iran.
Biden's role and the normalization of atrocities
While 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 US foreign policy – his predecessor Joe Biden helped pave the way for the current age of impunity. Biden, along with other Western leaders who provided unwavering support to Israel after the Hamas attacks in October 2023, defied and weakened international law in order to shield Israel long before Trump returned to office in early 2025.
For 15 months, the Biden administration undermined global institutions – including the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) – to help Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, avoid facing consequences for their war crimes in Gaza. Biden and other Western leaders rendered international law meaningless after their inaction and obstruction in Gaza – and it was only a matter of time before Trump abandoned any pretense of lofty rhetoric about human rights and rule of law. Trump prefers to flaunt American military power and his ability to inflict massive destruction on US enemies.
The normalization of Israel's atrocities in Gaza has rippled across the world, including the expanding regional war that engulfed Iran and the US. It has also diluted international outrage at Trump's repeated threats to destroy Iran, even within a period of months. While Trump's apocalyptic warning in April that "a whole civilization will die" prompted global condemnation, his subsequent rhetoric has barely registered.
In July, Trump claimed that the US would bomb one Iranian bridge or power plant in retaliation for each time Iran fired at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz. That kind of retaliation against civilian targets would be a war crime, but Trump has made such threats seem mundane and a normal part of warfare. At the very least, Americans and the rest of the world should call him out on it, Bazzi concluded.
