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Tom Nichols: Did Trump Just Threaten to Use Nuclear Weapons in Iran?
Gift link Tom posted:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/trump-truthsocial-destruction-iran/686716/?gift=otEsSHbRYKNfFYMngVFweOZ2ACsYtzYQB-Clgym7_50&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
-snip-
First, Trump is vowing to eradicate a nation of 92 million people and their entire culture, “never to be brought back again.” No leader standing in front of a court at The Hague would be able to finesse that language: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” doesn’t leave a lot of room for charitable interpretations. Even Richard Nixon, the author of the “madman theory”—the notion that a president might seek advantage over an enemy by appearing to be irrational—never publicly threatened to wipe out Vietnam. Trump could argue that his threats against bridges and electricity plants might not be war crimes, if they have a military use, but his promise to erase a civilization from the Earth is a flat threat of genocide.
Second, the most important aspect of Trump’s threat is that it implies the use of nuclear weapons. Trump did not explicitly invoke nuclear arms, and he claims to abhor the idea of using them. (He has also, of course, asked why America has them if they can’t be used.) But the United States could launch every conventional munition it has, and although that kind of onslaught would immiserate the people of Iran, result in many deaths, and make reconstruction a long-term nightmare, Iranian civilization would survive. German civilization survived years of bombing so intense that the firestorms melted glass and asphalt; Japanese civilization survived similar incendiary attacks and two nuclear bombs. A threat to destroy an entire civilization in one night, assuming he means it, can be fulfilled only with the wide use of nuclear weapons.
-snip-
Should Trump persist in his threatened course of action, then only a mass resignation of senior officers would stand between the president and a campaign of genocide. By this, I do not mean a mutiny or coup. The answer to Trump’s lawlessness is not more lawlessness. But American officers have a positive duty to refuse illegal orders, and the destruction of an entire civilization with nuclear weapons—which poses no similar threat to the United States—is as illegal as it gets. We must all hope that Trump’s message was an early-morning rant that got loose in the wild before anyone could stop him. But it’s out there now, and we are just hours away from his deadline. He is the president, and his words have meaning, and he has publicly committed the United States to the extermination of an entire nation.
If Trump gives that order, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should lay his stars down in front of Trump. Then, each general who gets the order should do likewise, and each man—and it will be men, in Hegseth’s Pentagon—promoted as a replacement should do likewise, until Trump has a pile of stars and eagles on his desk. Trump may eventually find someone to fulfill his orders, but people of honor and duty need not be the unwilling instruments of so great a sin.
First, Trump is vowing to eradicate a nation of 92 million people and their entire culture, “never to be brought back again.” No leader standing in front of a court at The Hague would be able to finesse that language: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” doesn’t leave a lot of room for charitable interpretations. Even Richard Nixon, the author of the “madman theory”—the notion that a president might seek advantage over an enemy by appearing to be irrational—never publicly threatened to wipe out Vietnam. Trump could argue that his threats against bridges and electricity plants might not be war crimes, if they have a military use, but his promise to erase a civilization from the Earth is a flat threat of genocide.
Second, the most important aspect of Trump’s threat is that it implies the use of nuclear weapons. Trump did not explicitly invoke nuclear arms, and he claims to abhor the idea of using them. (He has also, of course, asked why America has them if they can’t be used.) But the United States could launch every conventional munition it has, and although that kind of onslaught would immiserate the people of Iran, result in many deaths, and make reconstruction a long-term nightmare, Iranian civilization would survive. German civilization survived years of bombing so intense that the firestorms melted glass and asphalt; Japanese civilization survived similar incendiary attacks and two nuclear bombs. A threat to destroy an entire civilization in one night, assuming he means it, can be fulfilled only with the wide use of nuclear weapons.
-snip-
Should Trump persist in his threatened course of action, then only a mass resignation of senior officers would stand between the president and a campaign of genocide. By this, I do not mean a mutiny or coup. The answer to Trump’s lawlessness is not more lawlessness. But American officers have a positive duty to refuse illegal orders, and the destruction of an entire civilization with nuclear weapons—which poses no similar threat to the United States—is as illegal as it gets. We must all hope that Trump’s message was an early-morning rant that got loose in the wild before anyone could stop him. But it’s out there now, and we are just hours away from his deadline. He is the president, and his words have meaning, and he has publicly committed the United States to the extermination of an entire nation.
If Trump gives that order, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should lay his stars down in front of Trump. Then, each general who gets the order should do likewise, and each man—and it will be men, in Hegseth’s Pentagon—promoted as a replacement should do likewise, until Trump has a pile of stars and eagles on his desk. Trump may eventually find someone to fulfill his orders, but people of honor and duty need not be the unwilling instruments of so great a sin.
If Trump does give an order to attack civilian targets that have no military value as a means of collectively punishing the Iranian people - and make good his threat to begin a genocide - Marco Rubio should resign and the military must refuse the order.
— Tom Nichols (@radiofreetom.bsky.social) 2026-04-07T18:44:09.404Z
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
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