Trump's threat to destroy Iran prompts impeachment talk

For months, Democrats have tamped down talk of impeachment to avoid casting President Donald Trump as a martyr ahead of the midterms.

Trump not being on the ballot was helpful for Democrats hoping to retake the House, and making the elections about the president would not work in their favor, the thinking went. All but 23 Democrats in the House voted to derail an impeachment push by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) in December.

But the dam broke yesterday when Trump said he would eliminate Iranian civilization.

“This is a threat of genocide and merits removal from office. The President’s mental faculties are collapsing and cannot be trusted,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) posted on X. “To every individual in the President’s chain of command: You have a duty to refuse illegal orders. That includes carrying out this threat.”

“After bombing a school and massacring young girls, the war criminal in the White House is threatening genocide. It’s time to invoke the 25th Amendment,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) wrote referencing the provision that allows the Cabinet to remove a president it deems incapacitated. “This maniac should be removed from office.”

“If the United States Congress has any life left in it, every member of Congress and senator must be calling for Trump’s removal today based on the 25th Amendment,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) in a video message.

Trump’s post on Truth Social yesterday, in which he said a “whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” tested the limits of what Congress is willing to stomach amid a largely unpopular war against Iran. A wave of Democrats demanded his removal from office, with Rep. John B. Larson (D-Connecticut) formally introducing articles of impeachment over Trump’s statement. Even a few Republicans joined in and called out Trump, saying his rhetoric about eliminating one of the world’s oldest cultures went too far.

Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas), who supports robust defense policy and is usually supportive of the president, said calling for the destruction of the Iranian civilization “is not who we are, and it is not consistent with the principles that have long guided America.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said threatening civilizational destruction was not appropriate, even if it was only a verbal threat to pressure Iran to a peace agreement. Neither, however, demanded Trump’s impeachment.

The rage ended up being largely moot when Trump said he would hold off on bombing for two weeks, contingent on Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz. But Democrats maintained their disgust at Trump’s comments, even if they were only a negotiating tactic.

“This statement changes nothing. The President has threatened a genocide against the Iranian people, and is continuing to leverage that threat,” Ocasio-Cortez posted after Trump backed down on striking Iran.

Not all Democrats were unified in a call to oust Trump. House Democratic leadership demanded Republicans call the House back to Washington to stop Trump from further bombing Iran, but stopped short of supporting impeachment. Both chambers are in recess and scheduled to return next week.

Congress has previously rejected reining in Trump’s military action with war powers resolutions aimed at blocking further hostilities with Iran. The House narrowly voted down one such resolution by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) last month.

Trump said yesterday evening that the operation would be on pause to finalize a 10-point peace agreement with Iran and contingent on Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz. He asserted the U.S. had “met and exceeded all Military objectives.” Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said it accepted the two-week ceasefire shortly after Trump’s announcement. The council also promised safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz contingent on the ceasefire holding.

The administration previously said the mission was to neutralize a regime that has funded proxy groups in bloody conflicts throughout the Middle East, including the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Several of those groups have killed Americans in terrorist attacks in the region. Trump wrote yesterday morning that “47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end,” referring to the current Islamist regime that took over Iran during the country’s 1979 revolution.

Trump threatened to bomb the country’s bridges and power plants, saying earlier this week that “very little is off-limits” for U.S. strikes. But the laws of war limit civilian targets to those that are actively being used to wage war, and his rhetoric alarmed legal experts and former military personnel.

“I’m concerned that the president’s bombast is putting the operational commanders in a very difficult position,” Geoffrey Corn, who served as a top law-of-war expert at the U.S. Army in Iraq in 2004-2005, told our colleagues Adam Taylor and Ellen Nakashima. “They know that you cannot just draw a circle around the country and say every element of the electrical grid is now a lawful target.”

John Deni, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said Trump’s escalation in Iran targeting civilian infrastructure could jeopardize support from U.S. allies in future missions to secure the region. Trump has repeatedly blasted European allies for not doing to more to assist in reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Several European countries led by the United Kingdom expressed openness to helping with a peacekeeping operation after hostilities cease but could be dissuaded if the operation goes against their understanding of the Geneva Conventions.

“Europeans don’t support that kind of language, those threats. They take international law and our obligations under the laws of war specifically pretty seriously,” Deni said. “I just don’t see any European allies being incentivized by that kind of language.”