Trump Looks Frantic

President Trump’s threat on Truth Social this morning to destroy 25 centuries of Persian civilization in a single night echoes a joke by the comedian Eddie Izzard about Darth Vader ordering food in the canteen of the Death Star.

Darth Vader: I will have the penne all’arrabiata.
Canteen worker: You’ll need a tray.
…
Darth Vader: I am Vader, Darth Vader, Lord Vader. I can kill you with a single thought.
Canteen worker: Well, you’ll still need a tray.

Trump, in six lines, similarly moves from the grimness of mass annihilation to a cheery invitation to stay tuned for the next episode of his newest reality show. “God bless the Great people of Iran,” he concludes, after vowing to blast the entire country to pre-civilizational smithereens.

Trump’s Iran war has entered its seventh week, with no resolution in sight. The United States and Israel have gained control over Iran’s skies, striking wherever and whatever they wish. But Trump seems never to have seriously considered Iran’s obvious countermoves—despite the decades the intelligence community has spent war-gaming such scenarios. He’s now contending with an Iran-imposed global energy crisis to which he can offer no solution except blood-curdling threats.

On March 6, soon after launching the war, Trump demanded an “unconditional surrender” from Iran. But as the economic pain from the energy crisis has worsened, Trump has signaled an openness to conditions and a desire for a negotiated settlement.

[Read: Trump threatens to destroy an entire nation]

Other flip-flops promptly followed. On March 21, the president demanded that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours or face the destruction of its electric power plants. Then, 48 hours later, he offered yet more threats but also more time. Then, still more threats—and another postponement, this time to April 6.

On March 28, Trump reassured Truth Social readers, “No, Trump is not losing his nerve on Iran”—the kind of thing a president says only when it very much looks as if he is losing his nerve.

On March 30, Trump threatened Iran’s desalination plants unless the strait was reopened, but he changed the April 6 deadline to a vague “immediately.”

On April 1, Trump claimed that Iran had asked for a cease-fire, and he also threatened to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age.

On April 5, Easter Sunday, Trump called the Iranian leadership “crazy bastards”—and bumped back the deadline to the night of April 7.

On Monday, April 6, Trump threatened that all of Iran could be taken out in one night.

Now, on Tuesday, April 7, Trump has amped up the rhetoric yet again.

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!

[Barbara A. Perry: This is not how presidents typically communicate]

The language is ferocious, reminiscent of Kaiser Wilhelm II when he called for German troops to act like King Attila’s merciless Huns in avenging the 1900 assassination of a German ambassador to China: “Should you encounter the enemy, he will be defeated! No quarter will be given! Prisoners will not be taken!” That speech did not gain Germany the respect craved by its psychologically fragile ruler. It alarmed the whole world—and earned German soldiers the derogatory nickname of “Huns” in the two world wars that followed.

There is little question that American power can inflict hideous pain on the people of Iran, the very people whom Trump in January promised, “Help is on the way.” Like Wilhelm, Trump may also inflict generational discredit on the good name of the armed forces he commands.

But the thing Trump most wants to do—extract a face-saving deal from Iran before he wrecks the world economy and Republican electoral chances along with it—remains beyond his reach. The more brutally Trump speaks, the more frantic he looks.