A U.S.-Iran Ceasefire Is Here, but Trump’s Stone Age Mentality Endures
Last week, after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth repeated his boss’s threat to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Age,” Tehran’s diplomats responded on social media. “At a time when you were still in caves searching for fire, we inscribed human rights on the Cyrus Cylinder,” the Iranian embassy in South Africa posted on X. “We endured Alexander’s storm and the Mongol invasions and stayed; because Iran is not just a country, it is a civilization.” The days passed and the bombs continued to fall, while oil tankers idled on either side of the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran had effectively closed in retaliation for the war started by Israel and the United States. Then President Donald Trump, probably frustrated by the cascading economic consequences of the Iranian blockade, the regime’s refusal to capitulate, the growing unease among his MAGA or the apparent leaks of mutinous advisers inside the White House – delivered an apocalyptic ultimatum. “An entire civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back,” he said on social media Tuesday morning. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”
It was astonishing language, even for Trump, whose aggressive rhetoric has become background noise. Some Democrats have cited the post as evidence of the president’s deteriorating mental health and inability to remain in office. Iran’s envoy to the United Nations said Trump was broadcasting “his intention to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.” António Costa, the president of the European Council, said that targeting civilian infrastructure, particularly energy installations, is “illegal and unacceptable”, and added: “This applies to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and it applies everywhere. Pope Leo »
But the United States and Israel have shown little respect for international law or other similar obligations. The Trump administration believes it can protect American interests as it sees fit; Earlier this year, Trump told the Times that he was limited only by his “own morality”. While that statement doesn’t provide much clarity, close Trump adviser Stephen Miller offered his own explanation of the administration’s guiding principles. “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world … that is governed by force, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” Miller told CNN in January. “These have been the iron laws of the world since the dawn of time.”
This embrace of atavistic thinking in Washington — let’s call it Stone Age mentality — may play well with Trump’s nationalist base at home, but it has done little to advance his goals in the Middle East. By Tuesday evening, his bluster had given way to what seemed like relief at having found an off-ramp. After a group of regional intermediaries, led by Pakistan, negotiated a temporary truce, Trump announced on social media that he would “suspend bombing and attacks against Iran for a period of two weeks,” provided the regime allows the strait to reopen. Trump claimed that the United States had “already met and exceeded all military objectives” and was close to reaching “a long-term PEACE with Iran.” Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the US and Iranian delegations had been invited to Islamabad for possible talks later this week. On Wednesday morning, Iranian civilization was still standing.
