President Donald Trump says Iran will “be blown off the face of the earth” if U.S. vessels guiding ships through the Strait of Hormuz are attacked, escalating his threats to eliminate Iranian civilization as the countries test a tenuous ceasefire during the weeks-long war.
U.S. military officials said Iran launched missiles, drones and small boats at ships sailing through the passage with U.S. support Monday. Six small Iranian boats were targeting civilian vessels, according to U.S. officials.
If Iranians continue to target commercial ships during the so-called Project Freedom escort operation, the Iranian regime will “be blown off the face of the earth,” Trump told Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst Monday.
Trump’s latest rhetoric follows last month’s threats that a “whole civilization will die” in Iran “never to be brought back again” if the nation did not agree to a ceasefire deal and reopen the Strait, whose effective closure has choked off global oil supplies and surged barrel prices.
“Iran has taken some shots at unrelated Nations with respect to the Ship Movement, PROJECT FREEDOM, including a South Korean Cargo Ship,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday as he suggested South Korea should “come and join the mission.”
“We’ve shot down seven small Boats or, as they like to call them, ‘fast’ Boats. It’s all they have left,” he wrote. “Other than the South Korean Ship, there has been, at this moment, no damage going through the Strait.”
Trump told Fox News that he believes Iran has become “much more malleable” in peace negotiations and stressed that the U.S. is continuing to build up its military in the region.
“We have more weapons and ammunition at a much higher grade than we had before,” he told Yingst. “We have the best equipment. We have stuff all over the world. We have these bases all over the world. They’re all stocked up with equipment. We can use all of that stuff, and we will, if we need it.”
On Sunday, Trump vowed to aid commercial vessels stranded in the waterway to “free up people, companies, and Countries that have done absolutely nothing wrong” for what he described as a “humanitarian gesture.”
“They are merely neutral and innocent bystanders! For the good of Iran, the Middle East, and the United States, we have told these Countries that we will guide their Ships safely out of these restricted Waterways, so that they can freely and ably get on with their business,” he wrote.
The operation will deploy 15,000 troops, more than 100 aircraft and guided-missile destroyers, according to U.S. Central Command.
Iranian military officials have warned that any foreign forces approaching the Strait will be “targeted and attacked.”
“We have repeatedly said the security of the Strait of Hormuz is in our hands and that the safe passage of vessels needs to be coordinated with the armed forces,” according to Major General Ali Abdollahi.
Trump’s increasingly violent threats to Iran have fueled urgent, bipartisan demands to administration officials to remove him from office.
Last month, less than two hours before his self-imposed deadline to begin launching attacks that he said would destroy a “whole civilization,” the president announced a two-week pause in fighting while negotiations with Iran continued.
In an Easter Sunday message, Trump told Iran to “Open the F****’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell.”
Two days later, he wrote: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”
On April 19, Trump told Fox that “the whole country is going to get blown up” if Iran did not extend a ceasefire agreement.
Democratic members of Congress and some former Trump allies have rallied around the invocation of the 25th Amendment, which allows for the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to declare the president unfit to serve. Several lawmakers have also drawn up impeachment articles against the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Those proposals are unlikely to go anywhere under the current Republican-controlled Congress, and the president has built his cabinet around ironclad allegiance to him. Trump, who was impeached twice in his first administration, has publicly mused about his potential impeachment if Republicans lose control of both chambers after midterm elections this fall.
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