Donald Trump's language of war
As a Yoruba proverb says, Órò níí yo obì lápò; òrò níí yo ofà nínú apó. (‘Words draw kolanut from the pocket and words draw arrows from the quiver.’) That
As a Yoruba proverb says, Órò níí yo obì lápò; òrò níí yo ofà nínú apó. ('Words draw kolanut from the pocket and words draw arrows from the quiver.') That is, language promotes peace and generates or aggravates conflict. This applies aptly to the language of US President Donald Trump on the US-Israel war on Iran which started on 28 February, 2026, to bring about regime change and terminate Iran's nuclear programme, among other stated reasons. The war was launched without US Congressional support and due consultation with other nations.
It is said that truth is the first casualty of war. In the US-Israel war, close to two hundred female school children were killed when their school was bombed. To lift the moral burden of having killed innocent children, President Trump who ordered the bombing claimed that it was actually Iranian forces who killed the school children, because, according to him, Iran has had access to the kind of US Tomahawk missiles launched against the school. However, the killing of the children occurred in an initially one-sided surprise attack by the US and Israel, with Iranian retaliation commencing much later.
Moreover, on 7 March, 2026, on Truth Social, Trump said: “Iran, which is being beat to HELL, has apologized and surrendered to its Middle East neighbors, and promised that it will not shoot at them anymore. This promise was only made because of the relentless US and Israeli attack. … It is the first time that Iran has ever lost, in thousands of years, to surrounding Middle Eastern Countries.” From information that is widely available, this is an untrue account of the war.
Reflecting how much he relished the destruction and killings that the US-Israel attack had caused, President Trump, at a press conference in Cincinnati on 11 March, 2026, called the war “a little excursion”. One journalist asked him: “You just said it is 'a little excursion' and you said it is a war. So, which one is it?” To this, Trump answered: “Well, it's both. It's both. It's an excursion that will keep us out of a war.” This is vintage “mixed messaging,” and a “mixed message” is defined by Cambridge Dictionary as “ideas or information about something that seem to be opposite, especially from the same person.” Mixed messages tend to create confusion.
In another example of mixed messaging, Trump was reported to have said as follows by the 16 March, 2026 issue of Forbes News regarding his request to some countries to help to reopen the Strait of Hormuz: “The UK might be considered the number one ally, the longest serving, et cetera and when I asked for them to come, they didn't want to come.” He then said, as reported by the New York Daily News of 17 March, 2026: “We no longer need, or desire, the NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organisation] countries' assistance – we never did!” Moreover, for refusing to join the war on Iran, Trump, was reported by the BBC of 18 March, 2026 to have said that the NATO countries had made “a very foolish mistake,” and on 20 March, 2026 on Truth Social, he called them “cowards,” and declared: “Without the U.S.A., NATO IS A PAPER TIGER!”
Moreover, the war on Iran was tagged “Operation Epic fury.” Collins Dictionary defines 'fury' as “violent or uncontrolled anger.” As an adjective qualifying 'fury,' 'epic' means “on a huge scale,” as defined by English Explained. In this regard, on 19 April, 2026, Al Jazeera interviewer James Bays noted and asked: “[M]ilitary operations of the US often have unusual codenames, but this one is called 'Operation Epic Fury.' Who's fury? And should military operations be conducted in anger?”
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As reported by the BBC on 28 February, 2026, Trump said: “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people. Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world.” However, on 17 March, 2026, AP News reported that, in protest, Joe Kent, the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced his resignation and stated: “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
Regime change was also a key objective of the US-Israel war on Iran, and after killing several of the country's leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on 28 February, 2026, Trump said: “Finally, to the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand…when we are finished, take over your government.” However, on 1 April, 2026, in an address to Americans, Trump said: “Regime change was not our goal. We never said regime change, but regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders' death. … The new group is less radical and much more reasonable.” Really?
On 1 April, 2026, AP News reported Trump as saying at a White House Easter lunch about Iran: “We could just take their oil. But you know, I'm not sure that the people in our country have the patience to do that, which is unfortunate. … Yeah, they want to see it end. If we stayed there, I prefer just to take the oil … We could do it so easily. I would prefer that. But people in the country sort of say: 'Just win. You're winning so big. Just win. Come home.' And I'm OK with that, too, because we have a lot of oil between Venezuela and our oil.”
On Truth Social, on 13 March, 2026, Trump posted: “We are totally destroying the terrorist regime of Iran, militarily, economically, and otherwise, yet, if you read the Failing New York Times, you would incorrectly think that we are not winning. Iran's Navy is gone, their Air Force is no longer, missiles, drones and everything else are being decimated, and their leaders have been wiped from the face of the earth. … Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today. They've been killing innocent people all over the world for 47 years, and now I, as the 47th President of the United States of America, am killing them. What a great honor it is to do so!”
Also, in his 1 April, 2026 address to the nation, Trump said about Iran: “They have no anti-aircraft equipment. Their radar is 100% annihilated. We are unstoppable as a military force.” However, between 3 and 4 April, 2026, Iran shot down two US military jets. As a 5 April, 2026 report in The Guardian (UK) observed, these “incidents imply that Iranian air defenses may not be as degraded as the Trump administration claims.”
On 20 March, 2026 on X @RapidResponse47, President Trump was reported to have said as follows about the Iranian leadership: “We've been hitting them awfully hard. I don't know if you can possibly get hit harder. These are thugs, and animals, and horrible people.” As with the genocide in Rwanda, Iranians were being dehumanised here to justify and make killing them tolerable. Curiously, Trump called upon the grieving parents of the school children killed and other bereaved Iranians to rise up against the government of the country.
Moreover, on 7 April, 2026, Trump threatened to annihilate Iran when he said on Truth Social: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will.” Reacting to this threat on the floor of the UK Parliament on 13 April, 2026, Ed Davey, leader of Britain's Liberal Democrats, as reported by the Independent (UK), said: “'A whole civilisation will die tonight.' Words I never thought I would hear from an American President. … [T]hese words are a stark reminder of how reckless, immoral and completely outside the bounds of international law this President is. … He's no leader of the free world. He's a dangerous and corrupt gangster, and that is how we must treat him.”
In an Al Jazeera interview titled “This is America: War by instinct?” aired on 8 April, 2026, Tucker Carlson, one of President Trump's formerly very staunch supporters, said that he had tried to dissuade him from launching a war on Iran. Carlson remarked: “Once this [war] starts, the world is going to find out exactly how strong we are, which is not something you necessarily want to reveal. An implied threat is more effective.” On those like Tucker Carlson who have advised him against the war, Trump declared abrasively in a 9 April, 2026 Truth Social post: “[T]hey have one thing in common, Low IQs. They're stupid people, they know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it, too!”
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene responded as follows, according to a 9 April, 2026 report in Politico: “President Trump has gone mad as he wages war against Iran, a broken campaign promise. … I fought alongside Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones to help get Trump elected. And now he goes off on a rambling rant attacking all of us in one post.” In an Instagram post on 16 April, 2026, Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal from Washington also called Trump “the madman in the White House.” Similar ascriptions of insanity to Trump have led to the suggestion that the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution should be invoked to remove him from office as President for his tendency to be incapable of continuing to provide rational leadership.
Pope Leo XIV has also been a target of Trump's caustic rhetoric for counselling against war fueled by the “delusion of omnipotence.” On 13 April, 2026 on Truth Social, Trump said: “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy. … I don't want a Pope who thinks it's OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. … Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise. He wasn't on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn't in the White House, Leo wouldn't be in the Vatican. … Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.”
There are different forms of winning in the US-Israel war on Iran. With respect to mixed messaging, obfuscation, hot-air threats, hyperbole, untruths and acerbic language (one that is “critical in a direct and rather cruel way,” as Oxford Learner's Dictionaries put it), Trump is the undisputed champion.
