The Associated Press news agency quoted President Donald Trump on February 4 as saying he had given unnamed administration officials instructions to obliterate Iran if it assassinates him.
“If they did that they would be obliterated,” Trump said in an exchange with reporters while signing an executive order calling for the U.S. government to impose maximum pressure on Tehran. “I’ve left instructions if they do it, they get obliterated, there won’t be anything left.”
Trump in effect has made every man woman and child in Iran responsible for his well-being. He undoubtedly expects the image of his administration – manned by deputies loyal to him personally as well as to his thinking and his muscular governing style – to infuse credibility into his threat. Otherwise the disproportionality of it would make it difficult to take seriously. One thing is for sure – the usual voices in the West which would yammer about the need for proportional response have been surprisingly quiet.
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US President Donald Trump says he he has given unnamed administration officials instructions to obliterate Iran if it assassinates him
(Photo: Roberto Schmidt / AFP)
Trump’s idea is to dissuade any attempt on his life by promising that even if he is assassinated those behind the plot could not reap its “benefits” and will be eliminated.
In strategic terms, Trump issued a personal version of the well-known mutual assured destruction posture of the previous century. This strategy aimed to deter nuclear war by assuring the certain annihilation of the enemy if he ever dared to unleash one.
It is also reminiscent of the doomsday machine deterrence model which was first conceived of by the nuclear strategist Herman Kahn. It postulated a machine capable of destroying the world once it sniffs or senses radioactive fallout. Such a device, the theory goes, would constitute the ultimate deterrence as no country will resort to nuclear weapons for fear it will trigger the end of the world.
The last time a similar posture was publicized was on the eve of Operation Desert Storm ( January 17, 1991-February 28, 1991). Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, fearing for the survival of his regime, issued an ultimate threat to deter such last-resort circumstances from taking shape. He himself made sure the Americans got the message when he communicated it to a group of U.S. senators in a meeting on April 17, 1990.
After the war, in an interview in the Paris daily Le Figaro on September 30, 1995, then-Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz described the posture as follows: “We explained to the United Nations, the circumstances [under which] we could have used them [biological weapons] during the Gulf war. The unit commanders on the ground were authorized to use them if Baghdad had been attacked with nuclear weapons, and if they were unable to communicate.”
Given the Iraqi dictator’s use of chemical weapons against his own people (culminating in the March 1988 attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja by a deadly mix of mustard gas and nerve agents) as well as repeatedly against Iranian troops during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), the threat must have been seen as credible. It probably contributed to President George Bush Sr.’s decision to stop the war with the Saddam regime still in place.
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But the implications of Saddam’s directive must have been downright nightmarish. Leaders in Jerusalem were undoubtedly alarmed that the Iraqi posture meant that every base commander who experienced difficulties in communicating with Baghdad (for example due to electronic warfare) could assume the worst and fire weapons of mass destruction at Israel without further authorization.
Now it is the turn of the mullahs to sweat. From now on the mullahs should pray for Trump to have a long and healthy tenure for fear that any attempt on his life will be seen as coming from Tehran, leading to the apocalyptic scenario the president promised.
For their part, everyday Iranians must hope their fanatical leaders will take Trump’s warning seriously and eschew any thoughts of assassinating him. Perhaps this terrifying scenario would even galvanize them to assure such a catastrophe will never unfold by ousting the mullahs from power.
Dr. Avigdor Haselkorn is a strategic analyst. He has been published widely on national security issues.