President Trump on Thursday shared a post calling for the killing of Iranian leaders who won’t accept US demands, ramping up his threats against the country amid a very fragile ceasefire.
The post Trump amplified was written by Marc Thiessen, who served as a speechwriter for the George W. Bush administration. “If there are two factions in Iran, one that wants a deal and one that doesn’t, let’s kill the ones who don’t want a deal,” Thiessen said in a post on X where he was quoting himself from an appearance on Fox News.
Thiessen also made the case to kill Iranian leaders in an op-ed published by The Washington Post on Wednesday titled “Trump Doesn’t Need a Deal to Get What He Wants From Iran,” which President Trump also shared on his Truth Social account.
In the piece, Thiessen argued that Trump should restart the bombing campaign against Iran. “Right now, the remnants of the Iranian regime are under the misimpression that Trump wants a deal more than they do,” he wrote.
“Trump needs to disabuse them of that notion. He has reportedly told Iran that it has three to five days to make a serious counteroffer. If it fails to do so, he should resume combat operations — starting with strikes targeting Iran’s recalcitrant leaders. If the Iranian regime is really ‘fractured’ between a faction that wants a deal and a faction that does not, there is a simple solution: Kill the faction that does not,” Thiessen said.
Thiessen said the US should maintain the blockade and claimed the US military could open the Strait of Hormuz by force and that it just needed 14 more days to “finish the job” against Iran.
The Trump administration has pushed the narrative that Iran’s military has essentially been obliterated, but Iran was able to continue missile and drone attacks throughout the entire war, and according to US officials speaking to The New York Times, US intelligence assesses that Tehran likely has access to the majority of its missiles and launchers.
