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'The Whole Country's Going to Get Blown Up': Trump Renews Genocidal Threats to Iran as Ceasefire Collapses
"Whether he means it or not, his saying it is an indelible moral stain on our country," said one law professor.
Apr 19, 2026
President Donald Trump on Sunday renewed his threat to carry out a genocidal attack on Iran, pledging to "blow up" the "whole country" of over 90 million people and to demolish critical civilian infrastructure if it does not sign a peace deal by Wednesday.
"If they don't sign the deal, then the whole country is going to get blown up," Trump said, according to Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst, who relayed the comments on air Sunday morning.
Trump also reportedly said that the US was "preparing to hit [Iran] harder than any country has ever been hit before because you cannot let them have a nuclear weapon."
The comments came after Iran once again closed the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday in response to the continued US blockade of Iranian ports, which Iranian officials said violated the terms of the agreement reached between the two countries.
After renewing the blockade, Iranian gunboats fired upon a pair of Indian-flagged ships attempting to travel through the strait Saturday.
In response, Trump issued a furious post on Truth Social Sunday morning, saying that he would send a team of negotiators—Vice President JD Vance, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff—to Islamabad on Monday for another round of negotiations.
"We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran," Trump wrote. "NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!"
"They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years," he continued.
It echoed the similarly genocidal threat made by Trump earlier in April that "a whole civilization will die... never to be brought back again,” if Iran did not agree to a deal, which drew worldwide condemnation and sparked efforts by some members of Congress to pursue impeachment or push for Trump's cabinet to remove him via the 25th Amendment.
Trump has appeared eager to end the war with Iran after it caused economic upheaval and pushed his already dire approval rating even lower. But he has also backed Israel when it sought to undermine key points of the agreement, prompting retaliation from Iran.
The ceasefire announced earlier this month between the US and Iran initially included a halt to the hostilities between Israel and Lebanon. But within hours, Israel unleashed its most punishing set of attacks against Lebanon since the war began in March. Trump then backed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he claimed that Lebanon was never part of the deal.
Iran only agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz on Friday after Israel and Lebanon appeared to agree to a 10-day ceasefire. But Israel has already violated that agreement several times, continuing to raze Lebanese villages and fire upon people approaching its newly imposed "yellow line."
In addition to calling for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before he launched the war in late February, Trump has demanded that Iran make a deal to hand over all of its enriched uranium, which he refers to as "nuclear dust."
A spokesperson for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has said such a proposal would violate Iran's sovereignty: "Iran's uranium is Iran's asset. It is our responsibility, our energy, our sovereign right."
An end to the attacks against Lebanon has been described as another central demand from Iran, although officials said the decision to close the strait again on Saturday was in response to Trump's continued blockade of Iranian ports.
International law strictly prohibits indiscriminate attacks on civilian infrastructure with no military objective, including bridges and power plants that are critical to human life.
Trump’s previous threats to bomb Iran "back to the Stone Ages" suggest that the latest threats are less about accomplishing a specific military objective than about inflicting suffering on Iranian society as leverage.
Last time Trump made such a threat, a coalition of more than 200 groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Refugees International, and Oxfam America, wrote in an urgent letter stating that if carried out, such attacks would constitute "a grave atrocity" and that "a threat to wipe out ‘a whole civilization’ may amount to a threat of genocide."
Human Rights Watch said that, if acted upon, "the statement could be indicative of criminal intent if Trump were ever prosecuted by the International Criminal Court.
The last time Trump threatened to unleash an apocalyptic attack on Iran, the threat preceded a deal that, at least in principle, involved the US agreeing to negotiate based on a set of terms laid out by the Iranians. This led many observers to characterize the threats as bluster meant to save face before capitulation rather than a sincere pledge to annihilate Iran.
However, Adil Haque, a law professor at Rutgers and the executive editor at Just Security, said that, "Whether he means it or not, his saying it is an indelible moral stain on our country."
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Louisiana Advances One of the Country’s ‘Cruelest’ Anti-Homeless Bills
One homeless advocacy group said the bill, which would require homeless people to perform unpaid labor to pay for involuntary treatment, "evokes debtor’s prisons, convict leasing, and the ugliest day of Jim Crow."
Apr 18, 2026
The Louisiana House of Representatives voted this week to pass what the National Homelessness Law Center says is "one of the cruelest anti-homeless bills in the country."
Like many other anti-homeless bills being advanced around the country following a 2024 Supreme Court decision allowing states and cities to criminalize homelessness, House Bill 211, which passed by a vote of 70-28, makes unauthorized sleeping in public spaces a crime.
It is punishable by a fine of up to $500, imprisonment for up to six months, or both. Repeat offenders could face one to two years in prison with hard labor and a $1,000 fine.
The bill, which will now advance to the GOP-controlled state Senate, has been nicknamed the "Streets to Success Act" because, according to its sponsor, state Rep. Debbie Villio (R-79), the goal is not to jail homeless people but to "connect them to service providers."
Those who are convicted of sleeping outdoors could be given the option to avoid jail time by instead entering into a mandatory treatment program for at least 12 months. The bill authorizes local governments to set up semi-permanent camps in remote areas, where defendants would be required to stay and receive treatment.
The bill requires homeless defendants to pay “all or part of the cost of the treatment program to which he is assigned," a steep cost for many, as the average cost for residential drug and alcohol rehab treatment in Louisiana is more than $4,400 per week, according to the addiction referral service directory Addicted.org.
According to the bill, those who cannot afford this steep cost would be required to perform unpaid labor for the state or a local community center in lieu of payment.
Bill Quigley, director of the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans, called the bill's entire premise "a farce."
"If people had the resources to pay for housing and physical and/or mental health services, they would not be on the street," he told Common Dreams.
He described it as a "cruel theater of the absurd" based on "the lie that people choose to be homeless." The law, he said, "assumes our communities have plenty of affordable apartments and lots of mental and physical health services available."
In reality, he said, these services are chronically underfunded, and the city would need to build about 55,000 more affordable rental units to provide enough housing for its rent-burdened population.
Though it is not uncommon for homeless people to struggle with mental health or substance use issues, increases in the cost of housing have been shown to have a direct relationship with increasing homelessness.
Homelessness in New Orleans dropped considerably in the years following the Covid-19 pandemic, when Congress provided permanent housing subsidies for those in need. But after those funds have dried up, homelessness in the city shot up higher than before the pandemic, a study by the homelessness nonprofit UNITY of Greater New Orleans found in 2024.
New Orleans City Councilmember Lesli Harris (D), who has opposed the bill, pointed to the success of the city's Home for Good program, which took a "Housing First" approach to homelessness, providing rental subsidies and allowing people to move straight from encampments into housing without requirements that they obtain treatment.
According to a May 2025 report, the program had moved 1,133 people off the streets and into supportive housing and allowed eight homeless encampments to close.
"Through our Home for Good program, we house an individual for roughly $21,844 per year. By comparison, jailing that same person costs an average of $51,000—and failing to act at all can cost up to $55,000 in emergency room visits and crisis rehousing," Harris said. "HB 211 would steer Louisiana toward the most expensive option while producing no lasting housing, no services, and no real path forward for the people involved."
Harris has also decried the bill's creation of what she called "internment camps" for treatment. The bill's text requires these facilities to be far away from downtown and other high-value neighborhoods, which she said separates those trying to rebuild their lives from work, public transit, and other critical services, and further isolates them from society.
Since the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which allowed cities to enforce public-camping bans against unhoused people even when shelter is unavailable, around two dozen states and hundreds of municipalities have passed various measures criminalizing poverty.
The homeless advocacy group Housing Not Handcuffs points out that many of the bills were written by the Cicero Institute, a far-right think tank with heavy backing from billionaire tech investors that now has deep influence over the housing policy of President Donald Trump, who has taken a hacksaw to funding for public housing programs under the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Housing Not Handcuffs said Louisiana's bill, which would almost certainly be signed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry if passed by the state Senate, "is an extreme take on the already extreme copy-paste legislation" peddled by Cicero.
"This bill forces homeless people charged with a crime to make the false choice between jail or at least one year of forced treatment," the group said. "Louisiana has a long history—and present—of chain gangs, prison labor, and entrenched white supremacy. This bill clearly evokes debtor’s prisons, convict leasing, and the ugliest day of Jim Crow."
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Israel Continues 'Gaza Tactics' in Lebanon, Leveling Villages and Homes in Violation of Ceasefire
UN experts have said Israel's "destruction of urban and village housing that displaced persons would have returned to, is consistent with the pattern of domicide that was initiated during the genocide in Gaza."
Apr 18, 2026
Despite a ceasefire announced Friday, after US President Donald Trump said Israel was "PROHIBITED" from continuing to strike Lebanon, Israel continued to level villages and homes across southern Lebanon from Friday into Saturday in what has been described as a continuation of its "Gaza tactics."
Just as it did in Gaza, Israeli Army Radio announced Friday night that Israel had established a "yellow line" in southern Lebanon about 10 kilometers north of the Israeli border, effectively allowing Israel to occupy about 10% of Lebanese territory and maintain control of 55 towns and villages.
According to a report by Lebanon’s National Council for Scientific Research, Israeli forces have been destroying more than 1,000 homes per day since March 2, sometimes wiping out entire villages across southern Lebanon.
The campaign escalated later in the month after Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the military to "accelerate the destruction of Lebanese homes" near the Israeli border based on the "model in Gaza," where Israel has destroyed around 90% of all infrastructure and left most of the population sheltering in tents.
Israel has described this as an effort to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure. But the razing of entire villages has often appeared indiscriminate, and numerous attacks have targeted or damaged schools, hospitals, and other nonmilitary infrastructure. More than 40,000 homes have reportedly been destroyed or damaged.
Demolitions and land-clearing operations have continued after Friday's ceasefire, according to reporters on the ground in Lebanon for Al Jazeera. Israeli artillery also reportedly shelled areas around Beit Lif, al-Qantara, and Toul.
On Friday, Israel warned tens of thousands of displaced Lebanese civilians in southern Lebanon not to return to their homes despite the ceasefire, although some have begun to make the trek anyway. Many have found their former homes reduced to rubble.
“There’s destruction, and it’s unlivable," said one resident who was displaced from his home in Nabatieh. "We’re taking our things and leaving again."
Israel said Saturday that it had also carried out new airstrikes in southern Lebanon against people who approached the newly established yellow line. The Israeli military claimed that individuals crossed from north of the line toward Israeli troops, prompting "precise strikes" by air and ground forces against them.
An Israeli military statement described those approaching as "terrorists" who violated the ceasefire and said it carried out the strikes in "self-defense against threats." However, it did not specify what threat those approaching the line posed.
Previous attacks that Israel has said were directed at Hezbollah fighters have devastated civilian areas in southern Lebanon, as well as Beirut and its surrounding suburbs.
According to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between military and civilian casualties, more than 2,167 people have been killed since Israel renewed its attacks in Lebanon on March 2.
In Gaza, despite a ceasefire, nearly 100 Palestinians have been killed near the yellow line since it was established in October 2025. Those killed have included at least 36 women, children, and elderly people, according to TRT World.
On Wednesday, a group of United Nations experts denounced what they called Israel's "illegal aggression and indiscriminate bombing campaign" aimed at occupying land in violation of the UN Charter.
“The issuance of blanket evacuation orders, combined with the destruction of urban and village housing that displaced persons would have returned to, is consistent with the pattern of domicide that was initiated during the genocide in Gaza,” they warned.
On Saturday, a group of peacekeepers with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon also came under attack, resulting in the death of a French soldier. Lebanon's Foreign Ministry condemned the attack and pledged to identify the "perpetrators."
UN peacekeepers and French officials have said the attack was most likely carried out by Hezbollah, but Hezbollah has denied responsibility.
Israel's continued attacks on Lebanon also threaten to derail not only its ceasefire with Lebanon but also the US ceasefire with Iran.
After the announcement of a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon on Friday, Iran briefly reopened the Strait of Hormuz to unrestricted travel. But on Saturday, following reports of Israel's violations of the ceasefire, it was once again closed.
While Iranian officials said the proximate reason for the closure was the continuation of US President Donald Trump's blockade of the strait, they have also indicated that they want Israel to stop attacking Lebanon as part of the ceasefire.
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