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TRUMP THREATENS IRAN WITH ‘BOMBING THE LIKES OF WHICH THEY HAVE
NEVER SEEN’
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Brett Wilkins
March 31, 2025
Common Dreams
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_ Despite U.S. intelligence once again finding Iran is not currently
developing nukes, the president is trying to force Tehran into a
nuclear deal after unilaterally abrogating an existing one in 2018. _
Donald Trump at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York, April 23,
2024., Yuki Iwamura/POOL/AAP
Iran's military has reportedly readied ballistic missiles for possible
launch against U.S. bases in the Middle East after President Donald
Trump [[link removed]] renewed his
threat to wage war on the country if it does not reach an agreement
with his administration regarding nuclear weapons—which American
intelligence agencies have repeatedly found Tehran is not building.
Trump discussed
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during a Sunday phone call with _NBC News_' Kristen Welker, telling
her that "if they don't make a deal, there will be bombing, and it
will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before,"
adding that there is also "a chance that if they don't make a deal,
that I will do secondary tariffs on them like I did four years ago."
Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran's theocratic
government, warned
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that "if any hostile act is committed from outside, though the
likelihood is not high, it will undoubtedly be met with a strong
counterstrike."
Esmaeil Baghaei, a spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry, said
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media Monday that "an open threat of bombing by a head of state
against Iran is a shocking affront to the very essence of
international peace and security."
"It violates the United Nations Charter and betrays the safeguards
under the [International Atomic Energy Agency]," Baghaei added.
"Violence breeds violence, peace begets peace. The U.S. can choose the
course."
Iranian Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Aerospace Division, noted
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that "the Americans have 10 bases in the region, particularly around
Iran, and 50,000 troops based in there."
"This means they are sitting in a glass house; and when one sits in a
glass house, one does not throw stones at others," he added.
The _Tehran Times_reported
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that Iran's military has "readied missiles with the capability to
strike U.S.-related positions" and that "a significant number of these
launch-ready missiles are located in underground facilities scattered
across the country, designed to withstand airstrikes."
The U.S., meanwhile, is amassing firepower
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B-2 Stealth Bombers at its base on the forcibly depopulated
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Garcia in the Indian Ocean for possible use in strikes against Iran.
Trump's threat to attack Iran—which hasn't started a war since the
mid-19th century—comes despite U.S. Director of National
Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testifying
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the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last week that "Iran is
not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not
authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003."
U.S. intelligence agencies have repeatedly come to the same conclusion
since the George W. Bush administration.
However, Gabbard added that "Iran's enriched uranium stockpile is at
its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear
weapons."
That's at least partly due to the unilateral U.S. withdrawal from the
landmark Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—also known as
the Iran nuclear deal—in 2018 during Trump's first administration.
Since Trump abandoned the JCPOA—which was signed in 2015 during the
Obama administration by China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, the
United Kingdom, and the United States—Tehran has been operating
advanced centrifuges and rapidly stockpiling enriched uranium.
While there were hopes of a renewed deal
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the tenure of former U.S. President Joe Biden, no agreement was
reached, and Iranians continue to suffer under economic sanctions that
critics have said
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killing people and crippling the country's economy.
Earlier this month, Trump sent a letter
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Khamenei in which he claims to have said, "I hope you're going to
negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it's going to be a
terrible thing."
On Sunday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian left open the
possibility of indirect talks but said that the U.S. could not be
trusted to keep its word.
"We don't avoid talks; it's the breach of promises that has caused
issues for us so far," Pezeshkian said
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Cabinet meeting. "They must prove that they can build trust."
This isn't the first time that Trump has threatened Iran. In 2020,
during his first term, the president vowed
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strike 52 sites across Iran "very fast and very hard" if it retaliated
for the U.S. assassination
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IRGC commander Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Iraq. Later that year,
Trump had another message
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Iran: "If you fuck around with us, if you do something bad to us, we
are going to do things to you that have never been done before."
On the campaign trail last September, Trump told
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would "blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens"
if he was reelected and Iran didn't cease what he perceives as threats
against the United States.
While the U.S. has never directly attacked Iran, it did help
overthrow
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country's reformist government in 1953 and supported a repressive
monarchy for decades leading up to the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The
U.S. backed Iraq during that country's eight-year war against Iran,
during which then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces used
chemical weapons
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Iranian troops and his own restive Kurdish population. In 1988, a U.S.
warship in Iranian waters accidentally shot down
[[link removed]] Iran
Air Flight 655, killing all 290 passengers and crew aboard.
Then-President Ronald Reagan blamed the incident on the "barbaric
Iranians."
The U.S. has also supported
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People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), a State Department-designated
terrorist group that had previously assassinated six American
officials, and successive U.S. administrations have used international
financial institutions to punish Iran, like in 2007 when
Bush pressured
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World Bank into suspending emergency relief aid after the 2003 Bam
earthquake, which killed more than 26,000 Iranians.
_Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams._
* Iran
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* nuclear agreement
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* Donald Trump
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