By George Headley and Alysa Horton/Cronkite News
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s threat that “a whole civilization will die tonight” unless Iran complies with his demands left MAGA supporters and other Republicans deeply divided.
Carrying through on the threat – issued Tuesday morning, about 12 hours before a deadline he set for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz – would clearly amount to a war crime under U.S. and international law, according to legal scholars.
And Trump promised during the 2024 campaign that he would not get the U.S. into any new wars, particularly in the Middle East.
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who was once a close Trump ally, called his threat “evil and madness.” She urged the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, declare him unfit to serve, and strip his power.
“Not a single bomb has dropped on America,” Greene said on X. “We cannot kill an entire civilization.”
Eighty minutes before his deadline, Trump announced a two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan, contingent on Iran reopening the strait to shipping on which world oil markets rely.
The move eased tensions in at least two countries but did little to quiet the backlash sparked by Trump’s threat earlier in the day, which far-right podcasters Alex Jones and Candace Owens equated to genocide.
Jones said Trump sounded like “an unhinged supervillain from a Marvel comic movie” and said that wasn’t what he voted for.
Owens said Congress and the military need to intervene because “we are beyond madness.”
In November, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and five others in Congress who served in the military or CIA publicly urged military personnel to refuse illegal orders, prompting Trump to accuse them of sedition.
“If the president takes the actions he has threatened to take, countless Iranian civilians will die, it will massively escalate this war, and the United States will be seen as a country without a moral or ethical compass,” Kelly said hours after Trump issued his threat Tuesday.
Last week, Trump threatened to destroy Iran’s desalination plants. Water infrastructure on which civilians rely is not a lawful military target.
For some of his longtime supporters, such threats – including the one to obliterate a 2,500-year-old civilization, considered one of the world’s oldest – are excessive but not disqualifying.
“I would like to see Trump lower the rhetoric,” said three-time Trump voter Mick Sullinger, a 57-year-old technician and Marine veteran from Pittsburgh outside the White House during a visit to the capital. “I think it does nothing, but it strengthens the other side’s resolve.”
Sullinger yelled back at some anti-Trump protesters nearby and defended the president’s broader goals in Iran.
“This is 50 years of a terrorist regime that has done nothing but hurt the West. It’s hurt our freedom and democracy. … It’s time to eradicate this regime,” he said.
Vice President JD Vance underscored Trump’s threat during a speech Tuesday in Hungary at which he seemed to allude to a possible nuclear attack, though the White House rejected that interpretation.
“We’ve got tools in our tool kit that we so far haven’t decided to use,” he said.
In Arizona, Carson Carpenter, a 20-year-old Trump voter who co-founded Off The Record USA, a conservative media company, said Trump’s shift from his 2024 promise of no new wars has been disappointing.
Carpenter, a former president of College Republicans at Arizona State University, said he wasn’t thinking much about foreign policy when he cast his vote.
But now, he said, “We constantly see new conflict, which is … not a ‘promises made, promises kept’ agenda. That’s a ‘promises made, promises forgotten’ agenda.”
John Byrnes, the strategic director at Concerned Veterans for America, a libertarian conservative group, also said Trump’s rhetoric may have gone too far. CVA has advocated for a limited U.S. military presence in the Middle East and an end to “forever wars.”
“The language of destroying a civilization is extreme,” he said. “If we really are at the point where that is the goal of this war, then it’s imperative that Congress be involved in a declaration of war or authorization use of military force.”
Rick Wilson, co-founder of The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans, said the president “is an unhinged maniac who is threatening to destroy a civilization for kicks.”
“He has no goals, no plans, and no idea where he is,” he said by email. “He’s encouraged by a White House staff trying to out-cheer each other despite the damage he is doing to the economy. Every American should be afraid and call their Members of Congress to rein in this lunatic before it’s too late.”
Selina Cardenas, a veteran and the deputy director of organizing in Arizona for the left-leaning group Common Defense, called Trump’s threat “alarming.”
“The risk of civilian harm cannot be dismissed as collateral damage, and threats directed at civilian infrastructure raise legal and moral concerns under international law,” she said. “If carried out, such actions could also have far-reaching geopolitical consequences, including disruption to regional energy supplies that the United States and our allies rely on.”
After Kelly’s warning last fall about illegal orders, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered him demoted, with a reduction in retirement pay. The senator retired as a captain after 25 years as a Navy pilot, which included combat and four tours in space for NASA. None of the other Democrats had served long enough to retire, so he is the only one still potentially subject to military justice.
In February, a judge temporarily blocked Hegseth’s actions, which he deemed a direct assault on free speech and legislative oversight. The case is set for arguments in May before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
More than 100 experts on international law signed a letter last week asserting that Trump’s actions in Iran have violated the United Nations Charter and could amount to war crimes.
Rachel VanLandingham, a retired judge advocate and Air Force lieutenant colonel, was one of the signers.
She said in an interview on Tuesday that while it’s lawful to destroy so-called dual-use infrastructure that supports both civilians and the military, that doesn’t mean it’s good policy or morally defensible.
“What I fear is that there’s going to be huge target sets generated,” she said. “It’s awful, but it’s lawful.”
But she’s also confident that military leaders would ensure that only lawful actions were taken, even if the president orders strikes on a scale intended to erase Iranian civilization.
“If indeed, the president’s rhetoric is being turned into an order down the chain, that order is not being followed,” she said. “It’s being translated into lawful targeting sets.”
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