Trump Threatens Multiple War Crimes If Iran Doesn’t Change Regimes
Donald Trump has finally come clean about his objective for Iran—and threatened to launch a series of war crimes if he doesn’t get what he wants. “The United States of America is in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social Monday.Perhaps the Trump administration has finally given up pushing its original war rationale, based on unsubstantiated claims that Iran had obtained the materials to make nuclear weapons. There’s just one problem: Last week, Trump claimed that regime change had already been achieved in Iran, and the White House doubled down in a similarly nonsensical fashion. It wasn’t true. After Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed earlier this month, his son Mojtaba Khamenei, a hard-line cleric, was tapped to replace him. At the same time, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has only further consolidated power. Trump’s supposedly “serious discussion” for a new regime may be marred by his administration’s childish tactics: Just last week, they tried to start a rumor that the new ayatollah was a closeted gay man. Trump claimed Monday that “great progress” had already been made, but if a deal did not materialize soon to open the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. military would attack “all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched.’”“This will be in retribution for our many soldiers, and others, that Iran has butchered and killed over the old Regime’s 47 year ‘Reign of Terror,’” the president added. Of course, extensive destruction not justified by a military necessity is a war crime. It wouldn’t be the first the U.S. military has committed in Trump’s reckless war. Last week, the Pentagon ordered some 2,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne division to be dispatched to aid the war effort in the Middle East. The move has driven speculation that the U.S. military intends to seize Kharg Island, which handles 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports.