Foreign Policy

Trump Is Openly Targeting Innocent Civilians

He's using tools that were advertised as humane, but he isn't hiding the cruelty involved.

Matthew Petti | 4.7.2026 4:11 PM

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(Illustration: Adani Samat, Photo: Michael Brochstein/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom/Yuri Gripas - Pool via CNP / MEGA/RSSIL/Dreamstime)

President Donald Trump got straight to the point. "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will," he wrote in a Tuesday morning social media post directed at Iran. Despite unfounded speculation that Trump was planning a nuclear attack, the post likely referred to Trump's earlier threat to blow up all the bridges and power plants in Iran.

For years, bureaucrats and the chattering class in Washington have tried to justify innocent people's suffering from war and sanctions. America's enemies hide among civilians and weaponize civilian infrastructure, they argued. Military strategy and sanctions policy were designed to leave civilians alone, they claimed. Wars and sieges would actually liberate people suffering under evil regimes, they asserted. Trump keeps making their job harder by speaking frankly about what his goals actually are.

When the U.S. military bombed the B1 highway bridge........

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