Donald Trump has been clamoring for the Nobel Peace Prize since he retook office, repeatedly ranting about how he deserves the honor while simultaneously insisting he doesn’t care about it. The president claims he has ended numerous wars, saving millions of lives, and seems to believe that starting a war against Iran — one in which the United States appears to have killed dozens of Iranian schoolgirls, not to mention the thousands of other casualties — should also help his case. Peace through strength!
It’s unlikely, however, that the war is helping Trump’s case with the Nobel committee, especially after he threatened Tuesday morning to wipe Iran and its history from the face of the Earth.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!”
The threat comes in anticipation of 8:00 p.m. ET tonight, the deadline Trump has given Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz. If Iran doesn’t open the critical waterway in time, Trump has said the U.S. will obliterate Iran’s power plants and bridges, and that the nation will be “living in hell,” as he wrote on Easter morning after pleading with Iran to “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards.”
Trump has wildly flipped and flopped about the Strait of Hormuz, the closure of which has been choking off the world’s oil supply and causing prices to skyrocket. The president has insisted that the U.S. doesn’t need the strait to be open, that it isn’t America’s problem, and that allies concerned with oil should descend on the region and open it themselves. He has at the same time insisted that the strait must be open, and that if Iran doesn’t comply with his demands they will suffer the full wrath of the U.S. military.
Iran has not been complying, though, undercutting Trump’s strongman tactics. Unfortunately, ham-fisted threats of death and destruction seem to be the only cards in Trump’s deck. He’s backed off such threats since the war began, but it’s unclear what will happen if the strait remains closed on Tuesday night. Iran does not seem like it’s going to back down, and Trump may feel like his ego has no other option but to follow through and bomb the hell out of the nation of 90 million. Then again, he has a Nobel Peace Prize to worry about.
