By Gina Christian , OSV News
(OSV News) — President Donald Trump’s threat to annihilate Iran’s civilization violates multiple international norms, while the administration’s religious justifications for the U.S.-Israel war on Iran — asserting divine approval for the aggression — are “very disturbing,” experts told OSV News.
On April 7, Trump warned in a post on his Truth Social platform that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” referencing earlier threats against the Iranian regime if it did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz — a critical maritime transit route — by 8 p.m. EDT that same day.
Some 90 minutes before that deadline, Trump posted again that he had accepted a Pakistan-brokered proposal by which he would “suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks,” adding, “This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE.”
In the hours between the two posts, Trump’s statements drew criticism, including a swift rebuke from Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who called on the president “to step back from the precipice,” emphasizing, “The threat of destroying a whole civilization and the intentional targeting of civilian infrastructure cannot be morally justified.”
The same day, Pope Leo XIV — speaking to journalists at Castel Gandolfo, and without directly naming Trump — said he wanted to remind all involved that “attacks on civilian infrastructure” are “against international law” and signify “the hatred, the division and the destruction that the human being is capable of.”
In the course of the war, jointly launched by the U.S. and Israel Feb. 28, Trump has vowed the U.S. would continue “blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages” unless the strait were cleared of threats to shipping vessels.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, professor of law and international peace studies at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute, told OSV News that Trump’s April 7 statement and previous threats contravene key legal instruments such as the Geneva Conventions and possibly the Genocide Convention.
The Geneva Conventions, along with their accompanying additional protocols, specify protections to limit the barbarity of war, particularly with regard to noncombatants. The conventions and protocols form the core of international humanitarian law, which regulates armed conflict.
Established after the Shoah, or Holocaust — the systematic murder of 6 million European Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators — the Genocide Convention lays out several acts that, if committed with intent, constitute genocide.
Direct and public incitement of genocide, along with conspiracy and attempts to commit genocide, are punishable under the Genocide Convention, which the U.S. ratified in 1988, and which “is binding in war and peace,” O’Connell noted.
Iran’s envoy to the United Nations, Amir-Saeid Iravani, called Trump’s words “incitement to war crimes and potentially genocide,” and warned Iran would carry out “immediate and proportionate reciprocal measures” if Trump fulfills his threat.
O’Connell said if Trump followed through on his threat to annihilate Iran’s civilization, his April 7 Truth Social post would show “he’s announced his intent to commit genocide.”
“And the acts that follow that announcement will be a clear violation of the convention,” said O’Connell.
In a Substack column published about five hours before Trump called off his threat, historian Timothy Snyder — an expert on mass atrocities in Central and Eastern Europe — observed that regardless of the outcome, Trump’s post had, under the terms of the Genocide Convention, served as an “on the record” declaration of the intent to commit genocide.
“The Geneva Conventions make clear that you cannot use tactics that are designed to cause terror among the civilian population,” O’Connell said. “And these threats to kill the Iranian people, to wipe out a civilization, to bomb people back to the Stone Ages — this is designed to terrorize them into capitulating and doing his will. And that’s another violation of the Geneva Conventions.”
O’Connell further explained that “even when you’re targeting military objectives, you may not disproportionately harm civilians in the lawful intention to fight enemy soldiers or destroy military objectives.”
With Trump and several Cabinet members, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who uses the uses the moniker “secretary of war,” frequently invoking Christianity in their justifications for the war, O’Connell also said she was “particularly disturbed by the false invocation of religion” in the context of the aggression.
In an April 6 address, Trump said the Easter holiday had been “militarily … one of the best,” with Hegseth likening the April 5 rescue of an injured U.S. airman — one of two successfully retrieved after being downed in Iran — to the passion and resurrection of Christ.
Asked by a member of the media if he believed God supported U.S. actions in Iran, Trump replied, “I do, because God is good” and “God wants to see people taken care of. God doesn’t like what’s happening. I don’t like what’s happening.”
Earlier in his April 6 address, Trump said that “God was watching us,” and that “we were in Easter territory,” while Hegseth declared, “God is good every day.”
The Rev. Jim Wallis, founding director of Georgetown University’s Center on Faith and Justice, told OSV News that a number of Trump aides and supporters — including Paula White-Cain, head of the White House Faith Office — have cast Trump in a “messianic” light. White-Cain at an April 3 Easter White House lunch compared Trump’s struggles to those of Jesus Christ, saying “no one has paid the price like you have paid the price.”
“Because he was victorious, you are victorious. And I believe that the Lord said to tell you this: Because of his victory, you will be victorious in all you put your hands to,” she said.
“He’s now being compared to Jesus,” with the implication that “Jesus’ victory ensures” Trump’s victory, Rev. Wallis told OSV News.
Matthew D. Taylor, visiting scholar at the Georgetown center and an expert on Christian nationalist ideology, agreed.
“We also need to think about the backward-looking, more civilizational elements of this discourse,” he said, “which is very much invoking the Crusades as a model of civilizational conflict.”
He pointed to Hegseth’s fascination with the Crusades, which was explicitly delineated in Hegseth’s 2020 book “American Crusade.”
Along with the civilizational clash, Taylor underscored the “eschatological dimensions” of such framing, which figures heavily in certain forms of Christian nationalist ideology.
“They’re talking about spiritual warfare. They’re talking about the vindication of Israel. You can draw in all the Christian Zionism, all these things where they’re thinking more in terms of Armageddon, of this eschatological fulfillment,” he said.
Taylor said the invocation of ancient Scriptures invoked amid modern military conflict raises a “very, very significant question.”
“Do the Geneva Conventions apply to a holy war? Do the Geneva Conventions apply to an apocalyptic war? Because that is what Trump is threatening,” said Taylor.
He stressed the need to instead “find some very basic dimensions of humanity that we’re all committed to and that we are all abiding by.”
That task must be accomplished “theologically, not just politically,” said Rev. Wallis.
The use of Christianity to further U.S. aggression against Iran is “theologically heretical and dangerous,” he said.
“I do not know how you get to the point of praying for violence and suffering among your adversaries, when Christ forgave those who crucified them,” said O’Connell.
She emphasized that “the first principle of all human rights law teaching” centers on the protection of human dignity.
O’Connell applauded Pope Leo, who has repeatedly called for deescalation, dialogue and peace on all sides. She noted the rise of conflict and disregard for a rules-based international order is “a growing global problem.”
“We have to relearn the basic principles upon which our human relationships lie,” she said, “and that is peace and respect for human dignity — not violence.”
