A fragile ceasefire and the limits of power
As the deadline set by Donald Trump expired, the United States and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire, halting a rapidly escalating conflict that had pushed the region to the brink of a nuclear war. It comes after Trump categorically threatened to ‘annihilate the entire civilisation.’ Trump even declared that “whole civilizations” could be wiped out if Tehran did not comply. While Iran’s leadership, led by Mojtaba Khamenei, agreed to the ceasefire amid sustained military pressure, it was quick to stress that this is “not the end of the war.” Tehran has tied any lasting peace to stringent conditions, including sanctions relief, compensation, and security guarantees. The US President Donald Trump has been outlandish well before he declared war against Iran on February 28. He sent his fighter jets to Iran unprovoked, and when reportedly the negotiations were reaching a logical conclusion. Even before that, he unilaterally declared tariffs, disrupting world trade and alienating even his close allies. The war against Iran, which he thought would be over in a couple of days, has dragged on for over a month with no signs of Iran caving in. Frustrated as he may be, he gave a deadline to Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, which was summarily rejected by Iran. Hours before the deadline was to expire, he stated something which shocked even his close allies — a threat to annihilate the civilisation. In other words, a guised threat to drop a nuclear bomb, something no country has done for the last 80 years since the US dropped two nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, killing thousands of people at the height of World War II. Donald Trump’s threat to “wipe out” Iranian civilisation if Tehran failed to meet deadline oversteps the limits of leadership in a nuclear age. At one level, the statement can be read as brinkmanship. Yet there is a difference between signalling resolve and invoking the destruction of an entire people. It is a language no leader ever used, even at the height of the Cold War. The statement goes beyond coercive diplomacy explicitly prohibited under the Geneva Conventions. When the head of a nuclear state uses this as a threat, it is criminal.
The outrage from Democratic Party lawmakers is therefore justified. Patty Murray and Chris Coons have described the remarks as tantamount to threatening a war crime. Others, including Bonnie Watson Coleman, have gone further, calling for the invocation of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution — a mechanism designed precisely for moments when a president is deemed unable to discharge the duties of office. But can it be invoked when the President becomes a threat to humanity? The president may have discretionary power in times of war, but that is subject to legal and moral limitations. Even if one grants that the threat was a bluff, the implications remain troubling. A nuclear bluff risks miscalculation and narrows the space for de-escalation. The United States has long claimed a leadership role grounded in the legitimacy of its conduct. It raises uncomfortable questions about whether the world can rely on the steadiness of American decision-making.
