The turns on Iran with ultimatums that were then postponed and the aggressive messages full of vulgar insults unleash a new storm against Donald Trump, accused of being a “deranged” person who wants to “commit war crimes”. After spending days threatening “hell” on Tehran if there is no agreement, on Easter Sunday the president was even more explicit. «Tuesday in Iran will be Power Plant Day and Bridge Day, all in one. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the fucking Straits, you crazy bastards, or you’ll live in hell. You’ll see. Praise be to Allah”, he wrote on his social network Truth.
The controversy arose immediately. “He is raving like a deranged lunatic,” thundered Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. «It’s total madness. If I were in the Trump government I would call constitutional lawyers on the 25th amendment”, liberal senator Chris Murphy added, inviting members of the administration to consider removing the president as he is incapable of carrying out his duties. Criticism also came from Republican ranks. Americans don’t want their president to be vulgar. Part of leadership is self-control,” said conservative MP Don Bacon, a staunch supporter of the conflict against Tehran. However, the harshest words came from his former loyalist, Marjorie Taylor Greene: “He has lost his mind” and all those in the administration are “accomplices” who should “beg for God’s forgiveness”, she said, bringing attention to the health of the president who was rumored to be hospitalized in recent days, later denied by the White House. The race to replace Greene in the House (runoff elections are scheduled for Tuesday) is a first test to evaluate Americans’ reaction to the conflict in view of the mid-term elections. There are two veterans in the running with two opposing positions on the war. Republican Clayton Fuller, supported by Trump, is a staunch supporter of the conflict against Iran, while Democrat Shawn Harris has made his opposition to the conflict the central theme of the latest remnants of the election campaign.
Trump downplayed his explicit language in the Truth message. “I did it to clarify the point,” he limited himself to saying, also rejecting the accusations of possible war crimes. “Allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon is a war crime,” he dismissed the issue without managing to calm the criticism. Some Democrats have already addressed American troops telling them to contravene orders in case the commander-in-chief opts for escalation and decides to strike Iranian power plants. According to experts, such a raid would constitute a war crime which would be in addition to the violation of the UN Charter with the attack on Iran. What is worrying – explained one hundred legal experts and lawyers in an open letter published on Just Security – is not only the president’s rhetoric, but the risks to which he exposes soldiers in the field with his words: the fear is that the same violence claimed by the president will be reserved for them. Then there is the fact that Trump has surrounded himself with people who do not contradict him and this increases the risks. During his first term, when he threatened to destroy Iran’s 52 cultural sites, then-Mark Esper led the Pentagon, defining the attack as a possible war crime and assuring that the Department of Defense would not strike. Now at the helm is Pete Hegseth, whose rhetoric is no less than that of Trump even if with more religious references.