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US President Donald Trump (center) is flanked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio (left) and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (right) attend a Cabinet meeting at the White House on May 27, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Trump Says 'Big Decision' Coming on Whether to 'Annihilate' Iran
"Trump waving around 'annihilation' as if he’s God" is "startling to hear," wrote one progressive critic. "He is, after all, batshit crazy."
Sep 17, 2026
President Donald Trump on Thursday said he is weighing whether or not to "annihilate" Iran in a renewed effort to end the illegal 201-day US-Israeli war of choice, musings that came on the heels of a report by United Nations experts who said the United States likely committed war crimes during earlier attacks on the Middle East nation.
"I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them, or do I not?" Trump told Axios' Barak Ravid. "It's a big decision. Anything could happen with me."
Ravid said that Trump was referring to the Iranian government. However, the Iranian people have borne the brunt of six-and-a-half months of war and years of deadly economic strangulation.
Trump’s threat came as a United Nations fact-finding mission said there are “reasonable grounds to believe” the United States committed a war crime in two February strikes—one on the Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab and another on a sports complex and residential area in Lamerd—that killed a combined total of at least 178 civilians, including 120 children.
The UN experts' report pointed to the Trump administration’s “deprioritization of civilian harm mitigation and of compliance with [international humanitarian law], expressed through public statements by senior US leadership, including the president and the secretary of defense.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said early in the war that the US would eschew “stupid rules of engagement" meant to protect civilians, while vowing that US forces would rain “death and destruction from the sky all day long.”
Trump has repeatedly expressed his willingness to commit war crimes and atrocities against Iran, including through threats to “completely obliterate” the country's power, energy and water infrastructure and bomb the nation of over 90 million people "back to the Stone Ages."
“If they don’t sign the deal, then the whole country is going to get blown up,” the president said in April while unsuccessfully trying to pressure Tehran into an agreement to end the war. He also said that Iran's “whole civilization will die” if Tehran did not accept his demands.
The UN experts said that while they could not independently verify how many Iranian casualties the US-Israeli war has caused, they have "strong grounds to believe that the true figures for deaths and injuries are significantly higher than the [Iranian] government's reported toll" earlier this year of over 28,000 people killed and wounded.
Responding to the president's latest threat, progressive commentator Heather Digby Parton—who blogs under the name Digby—wrote that "this could all be bluster."
"Trump waving around 'annihilation' as if he’s God is still startling to hear," she added. "But I don’t have the sense that even he believes it anymore. But I would never assume that he won’t. He is, after all, batshit crazy."
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President Donald Trump on Thursday said he is weighing whether or not to "annihilate" Iran in a renewed effort to end the illegal 201-day US-Israeli war of choice, musings that came on the heels of a report by United Nations experts who said the United States likely committed war crimes during earlier attacks on the Middle East nation.
"I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them, or do I not?" Trump told Axios' Barak Ravid. "It's a big decision. Anything could happen with me."
Ravid said that Trump was referring to the Iranian government. However, the Iranian people have borne the brunt of six-and-a-half months of war and years of deadly economic strangulation.
Trump’s threat came as a United Nations fact-finding mission said there are “reasonable grounds to believe” the United States committed a war crime in two February strikes—one on the Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab and another on a sports complex and residential area in Lamerd—that killed a combined total of at least 178 civilians, including 120 children.
The UN experts' report pointed to the Trump administration’s “deprioritization of civilian harm mitigation and of compliance with [international humanitarian law], expressed through public statements by senior US leadership, including the president and the secretary of defense.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said early in the war that the US would eschew “stupid rules of engagement" meant to protect civilians, while vowing that US forces would rain “death and destruction from the sky all day long.”
Trump has repeatedly expressed his willingness to commit war crimes and atrocities against Iran, including through threats to “completely obliterate” the country's power, energy and water infrastructure and bomb the nation of over 90 million people "back to the Stone Ages."
“If they don’t sign the deal, then the whole country is going to get blown up,” the president said in April while unsuccessfully trying to pressure Tehran into an agreement to end the war. He also said that Iran's “whole civilization will die” if Tehran did not accept his demands.
The UN experts said that while they could not independently verify how many Iranian casualties the US-Israeli war has caused, they have "strong grounds to believe that the true figures for deaths and injuries are significantly higher than the [Iranian] government's reported toll" earlier this year of over 28,000 people killed and wounded.
Responding to the president's latest threat, progressive commentator Heather Digby Parton—who blogs under the name Digby—wrote that "this could all be bluster."
"Trump waving around 'annihilation' as if he’s God is still startling to hear," she added. "But I don’t have the sense that even he believes it anymore. But I would never assume that he won’t. He is, after all, batshit crazy."
President Donald Trump on Thursday said he is weighing whether or not to "annihilate" Iran in a renewed effort to end the illegal 201-day US-Israeli war of choice, musings that came on the heels of a report by United Nations experts who said the United States likely committed war crimes during earlier attacks on the Middle East nation.
"I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them, or do I not?" Trump told Axios' Barak Ravid. "It's a big decision. Anything could happen with me."
Ravid said that Trump was referring to the Iranian government. However, the Iranian people have borne the brunt of six-and-a-half months of war and years of deadly economic strangulation.
Trump’s threat came as a United Nations fact-finding mission said there are “reasonable grounds to believe” the United States committed a war crime in two February strikes—one on the Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab and another on a sports complex and residential area in Lamerd—that killed a combined total of at least 178 civilians, including 120 children.
The UN experts' report pointed to the Trump administration’s “deprioritization of civilian harm mitigation and of compliance with [international humanitarian law], expressed through public statements by senior US leadership, including the president and the secretary of defense.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said early in the war that the US would eschew “stupid rules of engagement" meant to protect civilians, while vowing that US forces would rain “death and destruction from the sky all day long.”
Trump has repeatedly expressed his willingness to commit war crimes and atrocities against Iran, including through threats to “completely obliterate” the country's power, energy and water infrastructure and bomb the nation of over 90 million people "back to the Stone Ages."
“If they don’t sign the deal, then the whole country is going to get blown up,” the president said in April while unsuccessfully trying to pressure Tehran into an agreement to end the war. He also said that Iran's “whole civilization will die” if Tehran did not accept his demands.
The UN experts said that while they could not independently verify how many Iranian casualties the US-Israeli war has caused, they have "strong grounds to believe that the true figures for deaths and injuries are significantly higher than the [Iranian] government's reported toll" earlier this year of over 28,000 people killed and wounded.
Responding to the president's latest threat, progressive commentator Heather Digby Parton—who blogs under the name Digby—wrote that "this could all be bluster."
"Trump waving around 'annihilation' as if he’s God is still startling to hear," she added. "But I don’t have the sense that even he believes it anymore. But I would never assume that he won’t. He is, after all, batshit crazy."
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