Donald Trump’s increasingly incendiary commentary about Iran has prompted fears that he could go even further to get his demands.
In a Truth Social post earlier today, he wrote: ‘An entire civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again. But perhaps something revolutionarily wonderful can occur, WHO KNOWS?’
His recent commentary shows that Trump sees the whole thing of Iran – and its 90,000,000 residents – as ‘expendable’, Dr Katayoun Shahandeh, Lecturer and Senior Teaching Fellow at SOAS, University of London, told Metro.
Still, Dr Shahandeh doubts the President would go for nuclear weapons to ‘wipe out a civilisation’, as Trump warned earlier today.
‘He’s now threatening a civilisation that’s 1000’s of years old and not only the 47-year-old Islamic regime,’ Dr Shahandeh said.
‘This civilisation has withstood the attacks from the 4th century BCE, with the Macedonian conquest of Persia and the burning of Persepolis, to the Arab conquest, the Mongol invasions, the Anglo-Soviet invasion of 1941 and the Iraqi invasion of 1980, and yet it has endured!’
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Strikes within the war thus far have hit schools, universities, hospitals, housing and civilian infrastructure, with UNHCR reporting that tens of millions have been displaced. All of this matters when assessing just how far Trump would go, Dr Shahandeh argues.
‘To this point, the pattern points to overwhelming conventional force somewhat than nuclear escalation. At the identical time, the indisputable fact that reports speak of iodine tablets being distributed, particularly to children, shows how deeply the fear of nuclear escalation has penetrated on a regular basis life.’
Dr Simon A Bennett, of the University of Leicester, told Metro the prospect of Trump using nuclear weapons is slim, even together with his apocalyptic post.
In his Truth Social post, Trump wrote: ‘In the event that they don’t make a deal and fast, I’m considering blowing every part up and taking up the oil.’
Dr Bennett argues: ‘Actually, in saying this, Trump is confirming he won’t use nuclear weapons.
‘If he uses nuclear weapons, he’ll irradiate Iran’s critical national infrastructure and territory to the purpose where it could be dangerous, and possibly deadly, to go in after the oil.
‘If it’s Iran’s oil he wants, the final thing he’ll do is contaminate the country with radioactive fallout. The contamination will last for a long time. No US oil company would comply with operate in such a dangerous environment.’
Could Trump actually be considering nuclear weapons?
Julian Borger wrote within the Guardian today: ‘The extremity of Trump’s threats, coupled together with his growing desperation to seek out a way out of the conflict, has increased fears that a volatile president could try to make use of a nuclear weapon.’
Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear weapons expert and professor on the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told the Guardian that although Trump previously showed restraint with nuclear weapons, he was now more unsure.
‘I don’t know the way strong that respect is when he’s losing the war and his mind at the identical time.’
Last summer, Trump vowed to unleash ‘essentially the most powerful and lethal weapons ever built’ if Russia were to produce nuclear warheads to Iran.
Trump has repeatedly said that the aim in Iran is to destroy the country’s nuclear facilities and spark ‘regime change’.
Today may be a turning point within the history of the region.
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