President Donald Trump on Easter morning promised to destroy Iran’s critical infrastructure unless it opens the Strait of Hormuz. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Open the F— Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.”
Trump reiterated and intensified the threat during a Monday news conference. “The entire country could be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night,” he said.
Maybe these statements were just bluster, maybe not. Regardless, if Tehran doesn’t budge, Trump will feel pressure to follow through and turn Iran into an apocalyptic hellscape before tomorrow morning.
Trump might even be tempted to accomplish this monstrous objective with the use of nuclear weapons. Amid muddled messaging from the White House, one of the most consistent themes has been the declared intention to “obliterate” Iran—and nuclear weapons offer the surest way to do that.
A new rhetorical theme emerged last week, when Trump threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages.” The phrase is associated with Curtis LeMay, who served as Air Force chief of staff during the Vietnam war. LeMay is known for something else too: his promotion of nuclear weapons and complaint that Americans had a “phobia” of using them.
Trump doesn’t seem to share that deranged perspective, but nuclear anxieties are growing thanks to his belligerence. Two weeks ago, a United Nations representative resigned from his post and leaked the disturbing information that “the UN is preparing for possible nuclear weapon use in Iran.” Days earlier, officials from the World Health Organization told POLITICO they were worried about a possible nuclear attack.
Last month, Arta Moeini of the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy told The American Conservative that the U.S. could launch a nuclear strike as “one last Hail Mary of trying to get Iran to capitulate.”
During the Cold War, the prospect of “mutually assured destruction” helped prevent America and the Soviet Union from resorting to nuclear weapons. A whole genre of game theory evolved to make sense of the novel standoff situation. But in the war with Iran, that logic doesn’t apply, since Tehran possesses neither nuclear weapons nor allies who would use them on its behalf.
Moreover, Trump doesn’t seem to have internalized the “nuclear taboo,” the idea that strategic planners consider the nuclear option illegitimate and uncomfortable to even contemplate. Joe Scarborough of MSNBC reported during the 2016 presidential race that Trump had questioned a foreign policy adviser about the impermissibility of using nuclear weapons. “Three times he asked at one point, if we had them, why can’t we use them,” Scarborough said.
Campaign officials denied the report, but Trump had said something very similar months earlier during an MSNBC town hall. The moderator, Chris Matthews, pressed Trump on his prior refusal to rule out using nuclear weapons in Europe and the Middle East, leading to a remarkable exchange:
Trump: First of all, you don’t want to say, “Take everything off the table,” because you’d be a bad negotiator if you did that.
Matthews: Just nuclear.
Trump: Look, nuclear should be off the table. But would there be a time when it could be used? Possibly, possibly.
Matthews: OK. The trouble is, when you said that, the whole world heard it. [Then–Prime Minister] David Cameron in Britain heard it. The Japanese, where we bombed them in ’45, heard it. They’re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president.
Trump: Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?
Arguably, Trump had a point. After all, a president can’t take nuclear weapons “off the table” without thereby negating their deterrence value. Still, the exchange suggests Trump approaches the issue with less gravity and forbearance than the average world leader.
The president doesn’t seem to have become more cautious about nuclear weapons in the past decade. This year, he allowed the last remaining U.S.–Russia nuclear arms control agreement to expire without an agreement to prolong its restrictions—despite clear signals from Moscow that it favored an extension—and he’s proposed resuming nuclear weapons testing.
If Trump decides to go further and actually push the big red button, at least one of his main advisors likely wouldn’t object. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has echoed Trump’s threat to send Iran back to the Stone Age, and he says U.S. armed forces should aim for “maximum lethality, not tepid legality.”
Other Trump insiders might even encourage Trump to go nuclear. The late Sheldon Adelson, who went on to become a Trump megadonor, said in 2013 that the U.S. should detonate a nuclear weapon in an Iranian desert to demonstrate toughness. “And then you say, ‘See? The next one is in the middle of Tehran,’” he explained. Adelson’s widow, Miriam Adelson, remains a top Trump whisperer and Iran superhawk. Might she be giving similar advice today?
At least some elites in Israel, America’s cobelligerent in the war, would like to see nuclear weapons used against Iran. Speaking last week on Israeli television, the journalist Shimon Riklin said, “The time has come for Israel to use an atomic bomb in Iran.” Seated nearby, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, laughed with apparent approval.
Even if Trump isn’t actually planning to annihilate Iran or expecting to force total surrender, a nuclear strike could still fulfill one of his apparent objectives. Military analysts say that Trump wants to exit the Iran war but thinks he’ll need to go out with a bang.
“President Trump is clearly frustrated and looking for an off ramp to end the war, but seems to want to put some kind of exclamation point on the campaign,” Jennifer Kavanagh of Defense Priorities told The American Conservative. “He’s hoping for a big win that he can use to sell the war as a massive success. This could push him to escalate, even as the returns are diminishing.”
Trump may have tried and failed to achieve such an “exclamation point” this weekend. The U.S. lost several military aircraft in what the government described as a search-and-rescue operation to retrieve an airman stranded in Iran after his own plane was shot down. On X, many users speculated that the mission had actually been “an attempt to seize Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium.” The Iranian government has raised that possibility as well.
“If this theory is true,” wrote the journalist Robert Wright (my former boss) on Monday, “Trump was probably hoping this cinematic win would be his exit ramp, and he wouldn’t have to deliver on his vile threats to obliterate Iran. No such luck.”
Trump’s luck has indeed run out in Iran, as I had predicted it would. He seems poised to escalate further, but conventional air power hasn’t managed to deliver a knockout blow, and ground force operations would bring significant risks with limited upside. Trump appears to be trapped, and I fear he thinks a mushroom cloud would offer him enough cover to get out.
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