August 16, 2024
In a social media post reminiscent of his most incendiary outbursts while in the White House, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has called for Iran to be “wiped off the face of the earth” if it dares to try to assassinate him. “If they do ‘assassinate President Trump,’ which is always a possibility, I hope that America obliterates Iran, wipes it off the face of the Earth.
If that does not happen, American leaders will be considered ‘gutless’ cowards!” he wrote July 25 on his social media platform, Truth Social. But a week later, in a disjointed interview with Elon Musk on X, Trump sounded a very different tune, saying, “I don’t want to do anything bad to Iran.” Talking about the wait for an Iranian attack on Israel, Trump said, “All this stuff that you’re seeing now, all the horror that you look at Israel.
They’re all waiting for an attack from Iran. Iran would not be attacking, believe me, [if I were president]. You know, when I was there [in the White House], and I say it with respect, because I think we would have been good with Iran. I don’t want to do anything bad to Iran, but they knew not to mess around [when I was president].
Iran was broke, because I told China, if you buy from Iran oil, it’s all about the oil. That’s where the money is. But if you buy oil from Iran, you’re not going to do any business with the United States.” China did buy oil from Iran during the Trump Administration.
Indeed, it was the sole country that bought Iranian oil after he reimposed sanctions. But Trump didn’t do anything. Trump’s talk recalled a controversial episode in 2019 when, as president, he threatened the “obliteration” of Iran if the country carried out an attack on “anything American.”
That confrontation came after Iranian officials said the path to diplomacy between the two nations was permanently closed after Trump issued a new round of sanctions. As president, he also threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” although he later became friends with the isolated country’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, and often referred to their “love.”
