On Threatening to Annihilate a Regime from the World’s Biggest Stage

A president stands before the United Nations and tells the world he has a “big decision”: either make a deal that lets Iran “rebuild and create a far greater country,” or “annihilate” the regime so it never kills or destroys again. This is not diplomatic embroidery; this is the naked language of friend and enemy. Around him hang other wars, offended media, elections, rising prices — but he chooses to define his reign by this stark choice. When a leader does this, he is not merely speaking to foreign rulers. He is fixing the measure by which history, and his own people, will judge his virtù or his failure.

I learned in Florentine councils that a ruler’s first duty is to maintain the state. Everything else — piety, reputation, even treaties — hangs from that hook. Here the declared danger is a hostile regime seeking a nuclear weapon. I do not know your technical facts, but I know the logic: if such an enemy acquires an arm that can suddenly ruin your cities, the balance of fear tilts. A president who believes this threat is real and near is compelled by necessity to act, not according to sermons, but according to the effectual truth of survival.

In The Prince I wrote, as translated by W. K. Marriott, that fortune rules half our actions, like a flooding river, and the rest is left to our preparation. When a president warns of “severe consequences” and speaks of annihilation, he is trying to build dykes in public: to frighten the adversary before the waters rise. But dykes made of words alone wash away. The question is whether, while the weather was fair, he strengthened alliances, positioned forces, hardened cities, and clarified red lines, or whether he trusted speeches and elections to turn the tide by themselves.

Your president frames the issue as a deal now or annihilation later, even hinting that Iran watches his midterm elections before deciding. This is already a concession that appearances and domestic struggles bind his hands. In my day, when I warned against mercenary arms, I meant not only foreign soldiers but any power you do not wholly command. Votes, fickle allies, media protests about banned outlets — these are modern auxiliaries. If his threat depends on them, the regime in Tehran will count senators and headlines as carefully as missiles, and may conclude that the lion’s roar is caged by the fox’s fears.

There is also the economy of harshness. A prince can be severe once, in a decisive stroke that terrifies enemies and calms subjects, or he can be cruel every day through weakness that lets war and uncertainty fester. If the danger from Iran is as grave as he proclaims, then a weak agreement that delays but does not remove the threat is the middle course I most despise: it purchases the hatred and cost of confrontation without the safety. Yet a war of annihilation begun without preparation, coalition, and a clear end-state likewise breeds endless blood and rancor. Severity must be well-used or not used at all.

The stage he chose matters. To tell the General Assembly, in front of friendly and hostile powers alike, that you may either raise a foe to “greatness” or drive it “into hell” is to gamble your entire reputation on a binary outcome. Many rulers love such theater. Few understand that once you make the world your witness, retreat becomes more dangerous than advance, because allies doubt you and enemies test you. In the Discourses I praised the people’s constancy over a prince’s impulses, yet here the people only watch, while one man’s words commit them to possible ruin if he later proves unable to match menace with means.

What would prudence counsel? If he has truly prepared his arms — not only bombs but enduring alliances, plans for the day after, and a domestic consensus strong enough to suffer the costs — then a clear, credible threat can force a better peace or, if necessary, a short and decisive war. If he has not, he should never have spoken of annihilation, but of conditions, inspections, and incremental constraints. To mingle talk of making Iran “one of the greatest” with talk of driving it into hell, all while tying the timing to elections, is to let fortune, not virtù, rule more than her half. A ruler may bluff rivals, but he must not bluff necessity.