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President Donald Trump made his most openly genocidal threat yet to Iran on Tuesday, threatening to “annihilate” the country and its 92 million people with “no hope of survival.”
In his opening address to the UN General Assembly in New York City, Trump asserted again that he is facing a choice on Iran about whether to make a deal “that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country.”
“Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic, and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” Trump said in his UN speech.
Trump has repeatedly made genocidal threats against Iran, prompting calls for impeachment and war crimes inquiries. These arresting remarks are especially alarming considering that Trump felt emboldened to make them at the highest-level gathering of world leaders, under the flag of an organization created after World War II with the mission of preventing global atrocities.
Human rights experts have previously said that Trump’s threats to wipe out Iran are genocidal. The UN’s Genocide Convention defines genocide as acts carried out “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Over the nearly seven months of his war on Iran, Trump’s genocidal threats have become commonplace. He has previously said that “a whole civilization will die tonight”; claimed numerous times that there “won’t be anything left” after he strikes the country; and, most recently, pontificated about “if and when do I blow the entire nation up?”
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During his remarks at the UN, Trump said that Iran’s air force, navy, nuclear program, and defense equipment have been totally destroyed by the U.S – a dubious claim that he’s made since the first week of the war. He said that Iran’s government “slaughtered 72,000 of its citizens this year,” adding that “recently 10,000 were killed for protesting.”
It’s unclear what events Trump is referencing. Iranian human rights activists have recorded roughly 6,500 protesters killed in mass protests in December and January, far lower than Trump’s 72,000 figure. Many mass gatherings in Iran since then have cheered the government against the U.S. and Israel’s war of aggression.
A UN fact-finding mission also recently found that two U.S. strikes on Iran during the first day of the war were likely war crimes in violation of international laws of civilian protection.
After making his genocidal threat at the UN, Trump claimed “we will make a deal right after the election. It doesn’t make sense for them not to. They’re waiting to see how I do in the midterm election, what they don’t realize is I am not running.” He said that, once the war is over, oil prices “will come plummeting down even lower than they were at the start of the conflict.”
Analysts have said this claim attempts to manipulate voters amid the president’s record low approval ratings, driven in large part by the war and the affordability crisis that it’s worsened.
In his speech, Trump also threatened Cuba, saying that his administration is “seeking a fundamental change in the situation in Cuba,” where he said left-wing leaders have “spent decades coordinating with the left-wing radicals and communist networks here in the United States.”
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