As the third week of the war in Iran came to an end, Donald Trump published a different kind of threat to his social media platform: If Iran failed to fully open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, the American president wrote, the United States would start destroying civilian power plants in the country.
Trump ended up backing off, but the significance of the threat lingered. It suggested that the administration was prepared to target civilian energy supply, which many observers recognized as a potential war crime.
As the sixth week of the war gets underway, the Republican isn’t just toying with the possibility of war crimes, he’s starting to lean into the idea with increased enthusiasm.
Trump’s Easter morning madness generated headlines for a variety of reasons, but among the more notable was that his online missive included explicit vows to target Iranian power plants and bridges. As the day progressed, the president did brief, one-on-one interviews with several media outlets to echo that point. The Wall Street Journal reported:
President Trump threatened to destroy all of Iran’s power plants if the country’s leaders don’t agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by Tuesday evening, ratcheting up pressure on Tehran.
‘If they don’t come through, if they want to keep it closed, they’re going to lose every power plant and every other plant they have in the whole country,’ Trump said in an eight-minute interview with The Wall Street Journal on Sunday.
Other news organizations heard similar comments. Trump told ABC News, for example, that he’s prepared to “blow up the whole country.” He also told Fox News, “I’m considering blowing everything up and taking over the oil.”
Pressed last week on whether the administration is prepared to commit war crimes, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing, “Of course, this administration and the United States armed forces will always act within the confines of the law, but with respect to achieving the objectives of Operation Epic Fury, President Trump is going to move forward unabated.”
There was obvious tension, however, between the first half of the sentence and the second.
The New York Times reported on the degree to which the president is steering the nation in radical directions.
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Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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Trump abandons all subtlety with talk of possible war crimes in Iran