Which City Will Donald Trump Bomb First: Tehran—or Minneapolis?

I can’t be the only one who noted the hideous irony of the president who is now overseeing the killing of American citizens simultaneously threatening to bomb (or do something to) Iran if that nation starts … killing its own citizens. “If they start killing people like they have in the past, we will get involved,” he said. “We’ll be hitting them very hard where it hurts.”

The protests in Iran are heartening to see, although we’ve all gotten our hopes up before about such surges in Tehran and other cities, only to see the inspiring unrest quelled and the regime reassert its control. Perhaps this time, things will be different. Life in Iran sounds absolutely miserable—70 percent food inflation, a worthless currency, and a government that’s bankrupt (I mean financially, but morally too, obviously), all on top of the usual ideological horribleness. And it seems that Sunday night, hundreds of protesters were killed.

I would love to see the United States of America live up to its stated values and use its influence—not its military might, but its influence—to help topple the foul Islamic Republic and create conditions where the Iranian people can build a democracy (as opposed to trying to build it for them).

But the United States of Trump is not remotely capable of this. For starters, Trump lacks the interest. He doesn’t care what happens to the Iranian people. He cares about the oil, and he cares about whether what unfolds there might reflect well on him—get him closer to that Nobel. But he’s probably just going to do what Benjamin Netanyahu tells him to do, and Netanyahu of course wants to see Iran either descend into an endless civil war or become a Pahlavian autocracy with which he can cut a secret and, in all likelihood, deeply corrupt deal.

The United States today utterly lacks the global credibility to lead any kind of concert of nations to try to steer Iran toward a hopeful outcome. Who would follow us at this point? We are an outlaw regime. That is something we’ve never been—either of those things, in fact. We’ve never been an outlaw nation, and one has never, until now, thought of the United States as being ruled by “regimes.” We have administrations. Other countries have regimes. Well, not anymore.

It’s worth asking how things came to this. We’ve done a lot of terrible things over the decades—installed dictators who imprisoned and murdered their people, armed death squads, and so on. But somehow, through it all, we’ve remained an international beacon for small-d democrats, immigrants who aspire to come here, and many others.

I’ve often wondered why we still have that reputation, which in some ways we don’t deserve. Some of it has to do with history, and the way we opened our doors to multitudes who came here to escape oppression. But most of it, I think, has to do with the fact of our democratic durability: We have survived, with all our tragic flaws, as a democracy for coming up on 250 years, years during which we have for the most part improved that democracy. No one else can say that.

Trumpism is actively trying to destroy these things. Trump and Stephen Miller want to close our doors to the multitudes, reversing what is arguably the central trait that has given our nation its rich flavor and character. And, of course, they have contempt for our democracy and in these past 12 months have set about to weaken and cripple it in any number of ways.

And now Trump says, as he told The New York Times last week, that the only bar on what he might decide to do on the world stage is “my own morality.” Against extremely heavy competition, that may be the single most chilling and terrifying thing he’s ever said. He clearly said it to troll us, and to troll the world. Because he knows that we know that he has no morality in any normal sense. He’s quite proud of the fact that he lacks a moral compass. So, when he is asked if there were any limits on his global powers, and he says, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me,” he is saying, and he knows that we know he is saying, that he will do what he wants when he wants.

Meanwhile, at home, he defended the execution of an American citizen, Renee Nicole Good, and then led the charge to defame her character, calling her a “professional agitator” before he knew anything about her.

The United States will never be Iran. We will never detain political prisoners on a mass scale or shoot protesters by the hundreds. I could be wrong. But I think we’ll never do these things because there are still enough people in positions of power who just wouldn’t order or sanction such things. Most federal judges wouldn’t let this happen on a mass scale the way it happens in a place like Iran, or in Syria under Assad.

However: If Trump could do it, he would. Remember in June 2020 how he wanted the military to shoot protesters “in the knees.” Then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper wouldn’t order his troops to do that. Today’s “War” Secretary? Well, Pete Hegseth was asked about this at his confirmation hearing, and he all but said that he would.

Trump’s “own morality” standard is one that should have us quaking. As I wrote last Friday, with ICE hiring gun and violence enthusiasts by the thousands, there will be more Renee Goods. And now, state and local Democrats, and even city police commissioners, are talk about taking tougher stands against these ICE raids by masked agents who are recruited to “defend your culture.”

Good for them. But Trump and Miller will use this to force more confrontations. As tensions rise, what will Trump’s “own morality” bar him from doing? Would he—and I ask this in all seriousness, alas—bomb an American city? I’m not talking Curtis LeMay and Tokyo here. Just a few bombs. To “send a message.” It’s entirely plausible. In fact, I’m not sure whether he’ll bomb Tehran or Minneapolis first.