President Donald Trump’s genocidal threat against Iran has already left a marring mark on history despite his last-minute retreat, according to author Anand Giridharadas.
“No one in that part of the world will forget that for generations, it will always have been true that the leader of the United States said that,” Giridharadas told The Daily Beast Podcast host Joanna Coles.
Giridharadas argued that Trump’s talk of erasing a “whole civilization” qualifies as “possibly the worst thing any American leader has said in modern memory,” and reveals the collapse of decades of American precedent and principles.
“The American policy, bipartisan policy, going back decades on Iran has been good people, good civilization—one of the great cultures of the world—hijacked by a bad regime,” Giridharadas said, referring to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which installed the current clerical regime. “An unfortunate 50-year blip in a glorious millennia-old culture that has given the world beautiful music and art and food and much besides—language, poetry.”
“When you think about a hijacking of a plane, you’re not blaming the passengers,” said Giridharadas, the author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.
But Trump, 79, seemed to do just that Tuesday morning, as his frustration erupted over the Iranian regime’s refusal to end its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” he declared on Truth Social, before ominously adding, “We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”
The post marks the point where “the United States completely departed from” its previous policy and “basically impugned” a “whole civilization,” Giridharadas observed.
And though Trump didn’t follow through, instead agreeing to an uneasy ceasefire that leaves the Strait of Hormuz firmly under Iranian control, the stain of his rhetoric has already set, according to Giridharadas, who writes about politics, culture, and power on his Substack The.Ink.
“TACO Trump always chickens out. He didn’t end up going through with that, thank the heavens,” Giridharadas said. “But to say we’re not going after a regime, we’re not going after regime change, we’re not going after a leader, we’re not going after an Ayatollah, we’re not going after a government—we’re going to murder a whole civilization—no one will forget that.”
The best-selling author argued that Trump, who had once framed regime change as one of his main goals in the conflict, has effectively declared that even if the clerical regime that has oppressed Iranians for decades is swept away, “there is nothing in this civilization” that is “worthy of rising again.”
“In other words, the president of the United States is more clearly and starkly than maybe any time in our lifetimes calling for genocide,” Giridharadas said.
Asked by Coles whether he thought Trump “actually knows what he’s saying,” Giridharadas said the president “has the abuser’s psyche to know what exact thing to say” in order to provoke a reaction.
“Trump is very capable of calibration. I find it very hard to believe he doesn’t know the difference between a regime and a civilization,” the author said.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
New episodes of The Daily Beast Podcast are released every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday on YouTube, and on other podcast platforms the next morning. Follow our new feed on your favorite podcast platform at beast.pub/dailybeastpod and subscribe on YouTube to watch full episodes.
