\n<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump has suggested the United States will destroy Iranian \u201ccivilisation\u201d if Tehran does not open the Strait of Hormuz and submit to his terms.<\/p>\n
About 12 hours before the Tuesday night deadline he set for Iranian authorities, Trump shared a social media post threatening to irreversibly obliterate Iran.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n \u201cA whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don\u2019t want that to happen, but it probably will,\u201d Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.<\/p>\n Iran is the heir to the millennia-old Persian civilisation, one of the most influential in human history.<\/p>\n For more than two weeks, the US president has been warning that he would order the destruction of Iran\u2019s civilian infrastructure, including bridges and power stations, if his demands are not met.<\/p>\n His latest post on Tuesday reflected the escalating and angry rhetoric he has deployed since the US and Israel launched the war on Iran on February 28.<\/p>\n Legal experts said targeting civilian infrastructure is a war crime.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s horrific. It\u2019s pure evil. It\u2019s disqualifying,\u201d Yasmine Taeb, legislative and political director for the advocacy group MPower Change Action Fund, said of Trump\u2019s threats.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the words of a deranged, unstable madman.\u201d<\/p>\n Taeb called for a \u201cstronger reaction\u201d from US lawmakers and the international community against Trump\u2019s rhetoric and policies.<\/p>\n Several Democratic members of the US Congress on Tuesday condemned Trump\u2019s threats and called for ending the war.<\/p>\n Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, called Trump an \u201cextremely sick person\u201d after the president\u2019s post on Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cEach Republican who refuses to join us in voting against this wanton war of choice owns every consequence of whatever the hell this is,\u201d the senator wrote on X.<\/p>\n Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, called on legislators from Trump\u2019s Republican Party to \u201cput patriotic duty over party and stop the madness.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCongress must immediately end this reckless war of choice in Iran before Donald Trump plunges us into World War III,\u201d Jeffries said in a social media post.<\/p>\n Last month, Congress failed to pass a resolution to curb Trump\u2019s powers to attack Iran.<\/p>\n The US president has not obtained authorisation from lawmakers to launch the military campaign against Iran in what critics said is a violation of the US Constitution, which grants Congress the power to declare war.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib said the 25th Amendment of the constitution should be invoked to remove Trump from office because he is unfit to serve.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter bombing a school and massacring young girls, the war criminal in the White House is threatening genocide,\u201d Tlaib wrote in a social media post, referring to the Minab school attack in southern Iran that killed more than 170 people.<\/p>\n Congressman Jim McGovern stressed that the US military is required to disobey \u201cillegal orders\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is evil. The President of the United States\u2019 genocidal threat to commit war crimes is illegal under federal & international law,\u201d McGovern said.<\/p>\n Despite the intensifying opposition to the war on the Democratic side, dissent against Trump has remained faint among Republicans.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Congressman Mike Lawler played down Trump\u2019s threat to kill off Iran\u2019s civilisation, saying the president would target only the country\u2019s civilian infrastructure.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is their energy infrastructure and their civilian infrastructure, including roads and bridges. That will cripple the Iranian regime and certainly their economy,\u201d Lawler told CNN.<\/p>\n The Republican lawmaker said Trump is acting \u201cwithin his legal authorities to conduct this war\u201d as commander-in-chief of the US armed forces.<\/p>\n The US president set 8pm in Washington, DC, (00:00 GMT) on Tuesday as the \u201cfinal\u201d deadline for Iran.<\/p>\n On the first day of the war, the US and Israel killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and several other top officials.<\/p>\n The attacks have killed more than 2,000 people and hit schools, residential buildings and medical facilities.<\/p>\n Despite the losses, the governing system in Tehran appears to have held together with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps \u2013 a wing of the Iranian military that is designated as a \u201cterrorist\u201d group in the US \u2013 spearheading the war effort.<\/p>\n There have been no major defections or antigovernment protests in Iran since the start of the war, and Khamenei was replaced by his son Mojtaba.<\/p>\n Iran has retaliated with rocket and drone attacks against Israel and US assets across the entire Middle East.<\/p>\n Iranian forces have also targeted civilian and energy infrastructure in the Gulf region and blocked the Strait of Hormuz to most shipping, sending energy prices soaring.<\/p>\n Still, Trump has insisted that he achieved \u201cregime change\u201d in Iran and the US has \u201cwon\u201d the war.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Trump left the door open for a diplomatic resolution despite his dramatic threat, saying \u201cmaybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe 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!\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n Iranian officials have remained defiant, threatening to meet any US escalation with similar military measures in the region and beyond.<\/p>\n Later on Tuesday, US Vice President JD Vance also issued a warning to Iran, saying that the US wants oil and gas to flow \u201cfreely\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve got to know, we\u2019ve got tools in our toolkit that we so far haven\u2019t decided to use,\u201d he said during a speech in Hungary. \u201cThe president of the United States can decide to use them, and he will decide to use them if the Iranians do not change their course of conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n President Donald Trump has suggested the United States will destroy Iranian \u201ccivilisation\u201d if Tehran does not open the Strait of Hormuz and submit to his terms. About 12 hours before the Tuesday night deadline he set for Iranian authorities, Trump shared a social media post threatening to irreversibly obliterate Iran. Recommended Stories list of 3 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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