Human Security Project Statement on Trump's Genocidal Threat Against Iran

The Human Security Project condemns in the strongest possible terms President Donald Trump's threat to commit genocide against the Iranian people. We call on the United States Congress, the American public, and the international community to take immediate action to prevent mass atrocities and protect the human security of the Iranian people.

On April 7, 2026, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social: "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again…" in reference to the Iranian people. These words are not hyperbole or negotiating bluster. Under international law, they constitute evidence of genocidal intent. Statements such as this are precisely the evidence prosecutors utilize in international criminal tribunals to establish the mens rea required to prove the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group, as outlined in the Genocide Convention.

Legal Obligations

The United States is a State Party to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Article III of the Convention does not limit punishment to committing genocide. It explicitly makes punishable: conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, and attempt to commit genocide. These are inchoate offenses that can be prosecuted even if genocide does not occur. Under domestic law, the Genocide Convention Implementation Act of 1987 also explicitly states that incitement of genocide is a punishable offense.

President Trump’s public declaration satisfies several of these legal thresholds. His words are now part of the permanent record. They are evidence.

A Concerted Plan

While some may attempt to brush Trump’s remarks aside, his staff have made it clear that this was not an empty threat. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth confirmed at a Pentagon press briefing that the US military had a target list "locked and loaded" with plans ready to execute. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt affirmed the threat was real, stating, "It was not an empty threat by any means. The Pentagon had a target list that they were ready to hit go on..."

A president who declares a civilization will die, supported by a military prepared to act on that declaration, has moved beyond rhetoric and into the territory of conspiracy to commit genocide and potentially attempted genocide. Both of which are punishable under Article III of the Genocide Convention, which the United States ratified and is legally bound to uphold.

Plans to execute genocide were assembled and ready. The fact that the genocide was not fully carried out this week does not extinguish the legal and moral gravity of what occurred, nor does it eliminate the threat of future genocidal actions by this administration.

To the United States Congress: You have a legal and moral obligation to act. These obligations transcend partisan politics. This war has proceeded without a formal wars power resolution, in defiance of constitutional authority. The war is also a violation of the UN Charter. And these threats and genocidal plans are in violation of the Genocide Convention. Both treaties should be treated as the supreme law of the land in the US based on Article VI of the US Constitution.

You must act to end this war. You must hold this president accountable for his genocidal rhetoric. And you must take action to hold the military’s leadership accountable for planning the kinetic operations that would have carried out this potential genocide.

You must use every constitutional tool available—including the removal of the president from office—to ensure that no individual can again threaten the annihilation of a people from the seat of American power. Your silence and inaction are not neutrality. It is complicity.

To the American people: The American people must make clear that this cannot stand. History has shown that silence in the face of genocidal threats enables these crimes to be perpetrated. Every member of Congress who supports this war, supports this genocidal rhetoric, or remains quiet must be made to feel the weight of constituent accountability.

Make your voices impossible to ignore. Make it politically untenable to support this war, this rhetoric, and this president. The Genocide Convention was written in an attempt to ensure ordinary people, institutions, and governments would never again be able to claim they did not know, or did not act. We know. We must act.

To the international community: This moment calls for clarity of action, not business as usual. Governments around the world should stand in unison to condemn this vile rhetoric and actions by this administration. Governments and heads of state should recognize this for what it was: the president of the United States making a public declaration of genocidal intent, backed by a military ready to commit genocide.

The Genocide Convention was explicitly written to both prevent and punish genocide. The international community must take action to prevent the US from carrying out genocide in Iran.

Allies must not normalize this behavior from the Trump administration, nor should they give any support for this illegal and immoral war. Do not offer legitimacy to an administration that has publicly expressed intent to annihilate an entire civilization.

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Contact info@humansecurityproject.org for more information.

A pdf version of this statement can be found here.