‘Intentionally Hyperbolic’: Ex-NATO Commander Says Trump Does Not Actually Intend To Annihilate Iran

Retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark insisted on Tuesday that President Donald Trump does not actually intend to follow through with his threat to completely wipe out Iran.

Clark, a former Democratic Party presidential candidate and ex-NATO Supreme Allied Commander, joined MS NOW’s Antonia Hylton on Tuesday where he argued that military leaders would not follow through on any orders to destroy Iran’s “whole civilization.” He also claimed that Trump’s threat, made on Truth Social, to annihilate Iran is “intentionally hyperbolic.”

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

The threat comes with a looming 8 p.m. deadline.

Hylton expressed concern the president is putting military lawyers in the bad position of finding legal justifications for the threat. Clark called Trump’s reading of Iranian leaders’ “psychology” off, but he insisted no civilian targets would be hit when the deadline comes.

Check out the exchange below:

ANTONIA HYLTON: But, general, hasn’t the president put them in  sort of, no matter what, in a very tricky position here. My understanding is, you know, when you are accessing those kinds of targets, that is a very careful process that military lawyers go through. It is not supposed to be the president states what he is going to do, and then they find justifications for it or things that work for, you know, his desires after the fact. But that’s sort of the scenario you’re describing here where the president has said he is planning to send an entire civilization back to the stone age, to destroy Iran. He has not used very careful terminology. When asked very directly, members of this administration have tried to skirt around and not address the question of war crimes. I imagine that has put military lawyers in a very difficult position tonight where even if they do their very best, whatever targets they strike, international lawyers will look to the president’s language and words and posts he put out to the public and have to assess them through that lens.

WELSEY CLARK: Well, first of all, I think the language is hyperbolic, and I think it’s intentionally hyperbolic in an effort to coerce. I think, unfortunately, that’s probably a misreading of the psychology of the adversary. I don’t think they’re coerced by that kind of language, but the president desperately wants a solution to this. He realizes, I’m sure, the trap that he’s taking us into where the [Strait of Hormuz] is closed. There are no good ground options available. The air power alone can’t address it, and the clock is ticking. And so it’s a very difficult position for the United States. He’s trying to weigh in the way he always does with his rhetoric and trying to push it that way. But I have tremendous confidence in the men and women of the armed forces. They’re going to go strictly by the law of laws of land warfare. They’re not going to strike civilian targets. They’re not going to do things that are improper, but they will strike targets, and I’m sure people will die, unfortunately, and this war will continue.

Watch above via MS NOW.

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