In a highly aggressive 40-minute speech to the United Nations General Assembly on September 22, President Donald Trump once again issued ominous threats to Iran, saying: “I have a very big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill or destroy people or countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?”

He implied that his “very big decision” would come after the midterms, suggesting that Iran is waiting to make a deal until then and, if one isn’t forthcoming, then he would choose annihilation.

Several commentators have noted that his extreme rhetoric was all the more shocking in the context of being delivered, as it was, at the world’s foremost international organization for the peaceful settlement of disputes, created in the aftermath of World War II “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.”

Every one of us has an obligation to ensure that we don’t experience such a bleak future, and to totally reject the idea that anyone should be able to decide to “destroy a civilization” or “annihilate” a people and a culture.

Indeed, all states that become members of the UN agree to resolve their disputes peacefully and to refrain from the threat or use of force against one another, as an obligation of membership—an agreement that the US is currently violating.

Although some news outlets lamented the tone of Trump’s speech and fact-checked it (finding the usual errors), few have explicitly pointed out his not-so-veiled threat to use nuclear weapons. Most have simply ignored it, and a few have even seemed to excuse it, suggesting that it was simply a “negotiating ploy.”

But this threat is similar to others he has made over the last seven months of the war, at moments of extreme personal frustration. On Easter morning, for example, he wrote on his social media account, “Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

A couple of days later, he warned: “A whole civilization will die tonight never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will… We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.” He has also threatened on several occasions to “bomb Iran back to the Stone Ages.”

I have previously written about the extreme danger of the president of the United States having “sole authority” to launch nuclear weapons and the ease with which he can do so. As William Perry, former secretary of defense under Clinton, has written, “For President Trump, starting nuclear war is about as easy as sending a tweet.”

This is especially concerning given his mental state. On April 30, a group of 36 senior mental health professionals, experienced in the diagnosis of cognitive impairment and the evaluation of dangerousness, issued an update to their earlier 2024 report, concluding (after citing the reasons):

It is our professional opinion that the behaviors of Donald Trump, tragically, are neither momentary lapses nor political theater. It is our professional opinion that they reflect a rapidly worsening, reality-untethered, increasingly dangerous decline… For the reasons cited above, emphasizing that he presents a clear and present danger to our country and to the world, it is our expert opinion that Donald J. Trump is mentally unfit to be the president of the United States and that steps to remove him from office must be undertaken with the greatest urgency.

Although the use of nuclear weapons is a considered to be a taboo, Trump has previously broken international taboos (seemingly without even knowing they existed), such as the taboo against political assassination, which he violated on February 28, when Israel and the US attacked Iran, assassinating its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameni, four of his family members, and a number of other........

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