Front Burner - ‘A whole civilization will die’: Trump to Iran

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

Today on the show we are going to talk about a grave threat made by U.S. President Donald Trump towards Iran where he wrote that unless the Strait of Hormuz is opened up “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”It set off a whole day of worried speculation. Could this mean the obliteration of Iran’s energy grid and water plants? A nuclear strike? Or could it be some incredibly high stakes bluster in search of an off-ramp?On Tuesday evening the picture got marginally clearer when Trump said he’d extended his self-imposed deadline by two weeks.Alex Shephard from The New Republic is back on the show. He joined us before Trump’s deadline extension offer, and the conversation remains very helpful.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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This is a CBC podcast. Hi everyone, I'm Jamie Poisson. Today on the show we're going to talk about the major developments coming out of Washington, the most urgent of which is a grave threat made by Trump towards Iran, where he wrote that unless the strait of Hormuz is opened up, quote, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. unquote. It was a truly shocking statement. It set off a whole day of worried speculation. Could this mean the obliteration of Iran's energy grid and water plants, a nuclear strike? Or could it be some incredibly high-stakes bluster in search of an off-ram? Well, later in the day, the picture got marginally clearer when Trump said that he had extended his self-imposed Tuesday evening deadline by two weeks. Alex Shepherd from the New Republic is back on the show, and And as it's probably clear to you by now, we spoke before Trump's deadline extension offer.

The conversation remains very helpful, though. Alex, hey, it's great to have you back. It's always great to be with you even in these circumstances. We need to timestamp this conversation for sure. We don't know what will happen by Wednesday morning when this air. You and I are talking at 1 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday. Let's begin with Trump's post this morning, a whole civilized. will die tonight, never to be brought back again. That language is perhaps, I think, the first of its kind in the history of the American presidency. And just what's your reaction?

Yeah, I mean, it's completely unprecedented. I think that there's a sense, too, that, you know, this is the apotheosis of Trump's reality show presidency, that, you know, it feels like he's sort of teasing a season finale or a big climactic episode or even that he's channeling, you know, his old appearances on. on WWE Raw, that kind of thing. Let me put it very simply, Vince. I'm taller than you. I'm better looking than you. I think, I think I'm stronger than you. And I think that that is shocking. It's scary.

And I think it also, to me, is a little distracting because I think that the sort of key point here is still the threat that Trump has been making repeatedly over the last few weeks, which is that he intends to target civilian infrastructure, specifically bridges and power plants. And I think that that is already a war crime. It's already unprecedented. It is already, you know, it's already out in the open that he's essentially saying that he will use collective punishment to try to get Iran to the table. So that I think is the sort of top line item here. But I think that what's happening sort of behind the scenes is maybe a little more interesting.

Right, right. Today, Iran has walked away from official negotiations, though I guess we don't know what's happening in a more like back channel way. And already today, the U.S. and Israel have hit railways and road bridges, an airport, petrochemical plants, knocking out power. Donald Trump's threat to hit Iranian targets that are not strictly military has already begun. He boasted of destroying Iran's biggest highway bridge last week. Now a strike on Tehran Sharif Technical University. There are reports of an attack on Iran's South Paz petrochemical facility. Iranian media is reporting there have been strikes on Khaarg Island, which houses a key oil export facility off the coast of Iran.

I think it's important to point out here, there's another partner in this war, Israel, and we have just seen them spend years wiping out civilian infrastructure in Gaza. You know, experts are saying, that this puts the military, the U.S. military, in a legal quandary targeting civilian infrastructure. I just wonder if you could elaborate on that for me. Yeah, I mean, these are illegal orders. And I think, you know, were they to be tried in court, for instance, at the Hague, you would have a serious issue here where essentially the commander

and chief of the military is ordering American troops to commit war crimes to target civilian infrastructure. I should say, just to note that when you talk to military officials, they essentially insist that there is no such thing as civilian infrastructure in Iran, or at least that there is no purely civilian infrastructure that everything is dual use, that the military is using it, and therefore is that for grabs. However, that is not a rationale that any legal expert with standing or any serious reputation that I've spoken to is saying. What they're saying is that these are clear war crimes. And again, that the president, posts on social media make it clear that this is intended for the purpose of collective punishment,

that this is in some ways, you know, if you look at, for instance, as you mentioned earlier, the conflict in Gaza, Israel was always very careful to insist that when they, for instance, you know, attacked the hospital, that they were really, you know, attacking a Hamas cell within that hospital. Hamas terrorists operate inside and under Shifa hospital and other hospitals in Gaza with network of terror tunnels. Hamas also has an entrance to those terror tunnels from inside the hospital wards. Trump is not adopting that pretense at all.

He's basically saying, you have 90 million people and we will hit them and we will punish them. We will perhaps even kill them unless you do what I want, which is to open the straight of foremost. And just for the U.S. military personnel on their part, like there is historical precedent here. Like, U.S. soldiers did refuse to take part in the 9. 1968, Maillai Massacre in Vietnam, and the officer who ordered that massacre put up this defense that he was just following orders, but that defense didn't actually work. And I think he was court-martialed. But also, you know, troops can be court-martialed for insubordination. And when Democratic lawmakers published this video in November telling troops not to obey unlawful orders,

no one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. We know this is hard, and that it's a difficult time to be a public servant. But whether you're serving in the CIA, the Army, or Navy, the Air Force, your vigilance is critical. And know that we have your back. Trump went online and accused them of seditious behavior, punishable by death, right?

Yeah, I mean, the administration has essentially adopted the Nixon line. If the president does it, it's not illegal, and tried to extend it as far as it can possibly go. I mean, the Maillai Massacre is a good comparison, but it was also done by, or essentially on the ground troops, right? It was ordered by William Calley, who was, I believe, a lieutenant, who was later convicted of murder.

But these were low-level troops. I think what we're seeing here is a bombing campaign, right, that is being orchestrated by the highest echelons of the Pentagon. So you could, for instance, see, I think, what would be a remarkable and, I think, unprecedented act in the U.S. military where troops or sort of high-level commanders refused to follow through on orders. This would be if, for instance, the president were to order a nuclear strike, which is what he seems to be implying he is considering to do.

This is something that seems plausible. However, what we've also been seeing, particularly as this conflict has dragged on for the last five weeks, is an effort within the Pentagon to essentially remove most dissenting high-level officers and sort of maintain, you know, a sort of tight core of people who will essentially do whatever the president and Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War slash Defense, tells them to do. Let's interrogate the plausibility of a nuclear strike here. You know, a whole civilization will die tonight. Trump has also said that the entire country could be, quote, taking, out in one night. Just this morning, Vice President J.D. Vance said, quote, they've got to know,

we've got tools in our toolkit that we so far haven't decided to use. The President of the United States can decide to use them and he will decide to use them if the Iranians don't change their course of conduct. You know, I know you said earlier that you thought the kind of end of civilization threat was a bit of a distraction from these very real threats that Trump has been making against infrastructure. But do you see this as potentially being about nuclear force? It's crazy that I'm going to say this, but yes, I do. I mean, I think that I think that I would not have said that two weeks ago. I do still think that the larger kind of behind the scenes game here is not really about using nuclear force. I think that the administration is very serious

about its threats to civilian infrastructure, but talking, I think, both to people with some insight into the president's thinking and certainly to, you know, high-level diplomats both in the U.S. and abroad. I think the general sense here is that the president is in a bind, right? He has gotten himself stuck in the exact kind of unwinnable quagmire war that he railed against when he was running for president 10 years ago. We will stop racing to topple foreign. And you understand this. foreign regimes that we know nothing about that we shouldn't be involved with. I think one way to look at these threats is as the president trying to essentially build up some sort of calamitous potential consequence that he can then back away from and claim as a win,

right? So he can sort of fold in some ways to Iranian demands to end this and then say, well, you know, I got them to the negotiation, the negotiation, the negotiation, table by threatening this. Now, another possibility, which some people have raised to me is, you know, if you look back at the sort of, again, to Nixon, an increasingly apt comparison to this president that, you know, he and Henry Kissinger kind of cooked at this idea. It's called the madman theory back then that Nixon, you know, would sort of act erratic, but that they would do this to try to sort of pressure their adversaries into thinking that he may take some sort of drastic action that could then achieve a strategic objective.

Nixon used it to get the North Vietnamese to the table by making them think he'd use nuclear weapons to defeat communism. The big problem that we have here is that the administration's strategic objectives are not clear. It is now to open the straight of Hormuz, but Iran and Israel have their own objectives now that have also shifted over the course of this war. And the idea, I think, that you can sort of just bluster your way into getting what you want, which is to back out of this conflict, is just simply outdated. And that I think is what's

really, really terrifying right now is that Iran has no reason really to kind of back down at this point. It is moving forward with this conflict as a means to achieve security, but in some ways also regional hegemony that it has desired but not been able to achieve since the Islamic revolution. And I think that where we are stuck right now is the sense that the president is trying to find a way out of this and he's trying to threaten his way to get what he wants and no one is listening to him. Just to push back on that a little bit. Do you think Iran has no reason to back down here?

Like the fear of what could be unleashed overnight, you don't see that as a reason? I think that that is a very good reason. I also think, however, that thus far, at least what we're seeing is that the Iranian leadership to the extent that it exists right now has not been taking those threats seriously. and that it's benefited from them, that it has shifted the war into its strategic objectives. It now has, for instance, control of the Strait of Hormuz in its grasp, right, as a possible endgame here. And, you know, I think it's a very dangerous strategy because I think the thing that's very

frightening right now is that the president keeps issuing these very severe ultimatums. And at some point, you have to act on them, right? or you lose all credibility. I mean, that's the idea of talking about credibility in this administration is in some ways an absurdity. I think what we're also seeing here, which is quite frightening, is so Iran has shifted its goals and now sees essentially, you know, control. It will either control the Strait of Hormuz or if the U.S. and Israel continue to attack its energy infrastructure, it will destroy the Middle East's ability to produce oil for most of the rest of the world. And then Israel, of course, Israel does not need oil from the Strait of Hormuz at all. It sees Iran as an existential threat that needs to be eliminated.

And it is acting on its own strategic interests as well. And I think those interests, Iran's and Israel's are what are currently kind of driving the situation on the ground. And what we're seeing, you know, with Trump's unprecedented, terrifying threats are, I think, to me, an example of the fact that the administration has lost control of the actual narrative. here, that it doesn't, that he's trying to essentially assert dominance that he does not have. If you're a parent, you likely have a steady hum of questions following you around all day. Am I doing enough? Am I doing too much? Why does everyone on my feed have an opinion and why does it all seem so urgent? I'm setting out to find some answers. I'm Dr. Shoshana Ungerleiter and this month on my podcast, TED Health. I'm investigating the intersection

of health and parenting, getting practical tips to hopefully ease your parenting anxieties, and help your kids feel calmer too. Listen to this series only on TED Health. So much of the reporting around Trump's first term used to be dominated by this notion that there were so-called adults in the room, people that understood history, had a certain loyalty to rules and an order not to people, right? That could restrain or moderate the president's worst impulses. Whether or not that was ever true is, of course, still subject to some debate. But one year into his second term, it seems pretty clear.

Those figures are gone. I know that the likes of Tucker Carlson are now saying military officials and those in Trump's orbit should simply refuse if this rises to a nuclear threat. Those people who are in. direct contact with the president need to say no. I'll resign. I'll do whatever I can do legally to stop this because this is insane. And if given the order, I'm not carrying it out. Figure out the codes on the football yourself.

Because everything hangs in the balance right now. This is not hysteria. This is 100% real. But, you know, question number one here for a lot of people, I think, is going to be about the kinds of checks and balances that exists within the system. who or what is currently standing between Trump and a nuclear event? Yeah, and this is one of the things that's, I think, really terrifying about this moment is, you know, during Trump's first term, I think, partly he was restrained by his own fear of essentially Iraqing himself, for lack of a better term, that he saw, he looked at Vietnam and Iraq as strategic blunders that destroyed presidencies and was intent on avoiding them. There was another, I think, interesting thing that was also happening behind the scenes during that first term, though, which was that the administration was still largely staffed by kind of old school Republicans. And it was defined by a conflict between the sort of parties old neo-conservative stalwart sort of interventionist figures like John Bolton, who played a role in the sort of second half of the first term.

And sort of rising Trumpian figures who were skeptical of American Empire and particularly skeptical. of military interventionism. J.D. Vance is, interestingly, one of the people that sort of rose out of that. And that debate has been totally sidelined now. Instead, and what we're seeing, are a group of individuals like Pete Hegesith, who are essentially driven solely by a desire

to fulfill the president's whims, and I think also to kind of mark the historical record. To some extent, there are still ideologues behind the scenes, like Marco Rubio, who is very, I think, intent on using his position as Secretary of State to exercise regime change in Cuba and also in Venezuela. But in general, what we're seeing is a president that is unconstrained, I think, first of all, by figures who have competing or differing viewpoints. But I think also he does not have people within the administration who can offer strategic objectives in and of themselves.

whatever you want to say about somebody like John Bolton, he's very clear ideas about what military intervention should accomplish. And that is, I think, what's been missing this entire time. The other thing that I think is missing, which I think we'll talk about in a second, is any sense of oversight. And I think that's sort of where Congress is supposed to play a role, right? This is a war, whatever the administration wants to say that is. It's a war. Congress has the power to declare war. Congress has the power to provide money to fund these wars. And I think one of the very alarming things that we're seeing right now is a sort of a real reluctance, I think, to put it mildly for Congress to exercise its constitutional powers. Well, let's dig into that a little bit more.

At present, there are dozens of elected officials that have publicly called for the invocation of the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. Essentially, they're saying that he's unfit for office. In recent days, we've seen all kinds of officials critiquing Trump's mental health. Former Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green posted that Trump was insane and said his administration was complicit. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump was, quote, ranting like an unhinged madman. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders called Trump's rhetoric, quote, the ravings of a dangerous and mentally unbalanced individual and called on Congress to intervene to end this war. You know, as I understand it, the invocation of the 25th Amendment relies on cabinet. like what would be the prospect of something like that happening?

Yeah, so the 25th Amendment was ratified in the 1960s. It emerged, I think, in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy's assassination, essentially there was a realization that we needed sort of a clear rules of succession. And so this was one of the ways to remedy that. What it allows for is for the presidential cabinet, who are figures like the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, to essentially remove a president that is unfit for office. That is the quickest and most efficient way to remove a mad king for lack of a better term.

It has not been constitutionally tested. It's never been used. And the other big problem with it is that it relies entirely on individuals who, to some extent, owe their loyalty to the president. So I think that whatever you think of the value of, or of invoking it at this point, I think the idea that that's something that is on the horizon does not seem likely to me. And I think that when you look at particularly members of Congress calling for it to be used, what they're also essentially doing is kind of abdicting their own

responsibility here. They're saying, okay, yes, we, you know, this president is under for office, someone should do something. And the someone in this case is Pete Heggseth, right? It's Marco Rubio. It's not plausible. Now, you could say impeachment, right? The other constitutional remedy here is also not plausible. However, it is a congressional means to achieve this end. Well, just talk to me a bit more about why that's not plausible. I mean, I'll just mention that I think all of those members talking about the 25th Amendment are Democrats, right, except for Marjorie Taylor Green and she's on the outs with the Trump administration.

Yeah. So, I mean, for one thing, right, the primary opposition to this war is coming from from the political opposition. There is, I think, a sizable and growing cohort of Republicans, although they're largely kind of fringe figures. So Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Green, the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones have all called for Trump's removal to some extent. How do we 25th Amendment is that's asked? The problem is to get the 25th Amendment's harder than impeachment. You have to get two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate.

So what do we do? But the cabinet needs to act here. And for the most part, these are people that have cast their law with Trump, right? Marco Rubio wants to be president, right? He is not going to become president by pushing to remove Trump from office. Now, J.D. Vance, his main rival for the Republican nomination, would become president in this scenario. The other issue here, right, is that, you know, for the most part, this war is still broadly popular among Republican voters. So there isn't this sort of political backlash that these figures could sort of reckon with.

And I think the other is that what we're not seeing here in any case, you know, anyone who's watched, for instance, be it Hegsset's press conferences in which he, you know, unleashes these sort of endless stream of cliches about reigning death and destruction down on Iran gets the sense that he is concerned about the kind of body politic or the greater good. you have an administration here that is driven by its intense and unwavering loyalty to Donald Trump. So that strikes me as not particularly plausible either. Now, you know, this war is already getting out of control. And I think this is historically where you would expect Congress to exercise some form of oversight. And in general, you know, there have been some pushes to sort of vote on the war. Powers Act, essentially try to assert some degree of congressional control over here, over what's happening. But those haven't really gone anywhere either. Now, part of that, again, is because Republicans maintain narrow control over Congress itself. But even though Democrats have,

I think, grown more vociferous, I think today, particularly after the president's really alarming social media posts, I think have been more full-throated in their condemnation of this war than ever before. But they have also not wanted to step forward for their own internal political reasons. What are those? Well, they want to win the midterms, basically. And so what we're seeing from Chuck Schumer,

the Senate leader and Hakeem Jeffery is the leader in the House, is a real reluctance to kind of step forward. In general, the idea is that they believe that Trump has more than enough rope to hang himself in his party with him. come November and that anything that they can do to sort of step forward or in some cases to try to rein him in might hurt them down the line there that what we're seeing here is, you know, a president that is destroying the economy, that he's destroying the credibility

of the United States. You know, these are these are good things for the party in a purely electoral standpoint. And so, and in there too, I think they also have looked back, this is at least will my own reporting suggest that they've looked at Trump's first term in which there were several impeachment, successful impeachments that did not lead to removal. And they thought that those were political failures. I want to pivot a little bit here. We've run through some military options in Iran, as well as a specter of a nuclear attack. But over the weekend, we learned the details of a pretty incredible story out of Iran concerning the rescue of an American airman whose plane was shot down just miles away from one of the most strategically important cities in the Middle East.

American officials say the airman survived for nearly two days before being extracted in a pretty remarkable rescue mission that involved hundreds of military personnel. And don't forget, how many men did you send all together approximately for the operation? I'd love to keep that a secret. Okay, well, we are. But I will tell you, the number, I'll keep it a secret, but it was hundreds. When Trump described as one of the most daring search and rescue operations in U.S. history, and like, let's just begin with the rescue itself.

What do we actually know about the downed airman and the mission to extract him? Yeah, I mean, by many account, it's one of the most extraordinary events and sort of recent American military history during one of the recent bombing runs that have been taking place regularly overrun and F-15E was shot down. These are planes that are, they're designed for just one pilot, but they now regularly have two airmen inside of them. Both of them safely ejected. One of them was recovered very quickly, but the other one basically had to rely on training, basically ran as fast and as far as he could very quickly to extend the sort of search area, knowing full well that the Iranian military would be trying to apprehend him, successfully hid in a crevice, I believe, and activated an emergency beacon.

The U.S. then engaged in a sort of massive operation that relied really heavily on deception to sort of confuse Iranian military and safely extracted him, I believe, less than 48 hours after he first went down. Yeah. And again, I think for for a war that has had very little in terms of good news or heroism, if you look at the president's tweets, I think one reason why this story really resonated is that it was a sort of piece of positive news. It was a sort of reminder of the sort of everyday heroism of the U.S. military that has been in short supply, I guess, in recent conflicts. Mm-hmm. But pretty quickly, some journalists began to raise questions around the story, right? And whether it was as straightforward as it seems on its face. For example, the fact that this all took place 50 kilometers away from the city of Isfahan, which happens to be the center of nuclear and atomic science and technology in Iran. It was also reported that Trump was considering a risky land operation into Isfahan to seize enriched uranium. This pilot was also shot out of the sky just days after Trump said Iran had no anti-aircraft equipment and that their radar is 100% annihilated. You would need all of those things to shoot a plane under the sky. This extraction mission saw the U.S. land at least two enormous planes that they later had to themselves in order to keep them out of the hands of Iran blow up. Though Iran disbues this and is taking credit for destroying those planes. A second pilot was shot down nearby as well, though he was rescued without issue.

I just, what do you make of people's skepticism? And is this a story that you are approaching with caution? So when this story started to come out, it basically was clear from the beginning that it had been heavily edited and controlled by the Pentagon. It was given to a number of outlets at the same time in the same manner. So we know that this is, you know, it's a feel-good story, but it is one that is coming straight from U.S. military leadership that has given us almost no reason to trust it. So I would say that it's worth approaching with some caution. And again, too, I think the other aspect here, though, as well, is that the administration is just looking for good stories here, because in general, what

we're seeing are not a lot of that, right? It's a lot of bombing devastation and a conflict like that keeps dragging on and on. Just on, you know, the good news point, I think part of what people are responding to here is that there is a long history of American rescue narratives, some real, some exaggerated, some mythologized, and turned into a real kind of propaganda device. I'm thinking of the story of Jessica Lynch, for example, who was this young American soldier taken hostage in the early days of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And she was made out to be much more of heroin than she was.

She has even testified to this fact. And my parents home in work county, West Virginia. It was understaged by media, all repeating the story of the little girl Rambo from the hills of West Virginia who went down fighting. It was not true. And on the downed airman, Hegset, essentially, liken the story of this airman to a kind of Jesus narrative. Shot down on a Friday, good Friday, hidden in a cave, a crevice all of Saturday, and rescued on Sunday, flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday. A pilot reborn.

Yeah. I'm thinking of the power of that image, right? the American soldier saved after being behind enemy lines on Easter. What purpose do these kind of narratives serve in war? Yeah, there are a couple of things that I think are happening here. One is just that this is not a war with a clear strategic objective, right? This president, this administration even has not sold it at any point to the American people in a clear way. So having a story like this gives them some sort of narrative hook that you can hold on to or it gives us an excuse to be in Iran, right?

We have to be there, right? They're going to kidnap our guys. But I think, you know, even if you approach it with maximum skepticism or if you take it whole cloth, I think it points to something that, to me, gets at the heart of the problem. And to me, I think the heart of the problem at the center of U.S. military in the wake of 9-11, which is that the U.S. military is still probably, I would say clearly, the most sophisticated and powerful military in the world. They are capable of executing enormously complex missions that are costly, but also that will bring in, you know, thousands of people and they will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. And they can achieve those goals, right? They can kidnap the president of Venezuela. They can rescue a downed airmen in Iran.

But what we are not seeing is that military having the ability to accomplish grand objectives, right? It cannot bring democracy to Iraq, right? It cannot reopen the Strait of Hormuz. It can do all of these smaller, sophisticated things. And I think that Donald Trump has looked at, that ability, Pete Hegesith, looked at that ability and said, well, we can do whatever we want in Iran, right? They have these cheap drones, right? And we have powerful, you know, $100 million, multi-hundred million dollar aircrafts. But that doesn't mean that we're any closer to, for instance, reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Okay. Let's end there. Alex, thank you. Thank you. All right. That is all for today. We're keeping really close tabs. on this developing story, so do stay tuned throughout the week. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca slash podcasts.