Trump Casually Drops ‘Ultimate’ Threat if War Deal Fizzles

Donald Trump raised the chilling specter of an “ultimate alternative” if the current deal he says is pending with Iran fails to materialize.

Read more ICE Barbie Bungles Comeback Interview With Embarrassing Geography Errors

The president, 79, appeared to imply a nuclear attack against Iran in a Truth Social post on Saturday, after claiming the deal to end the war will be signed Sunday. His post was also critical of former President Barack Obama.

“Hopefully this process will all work out quickly, easily and smoothly,” the president posted Sunday on Truth Social. “If it doesn’t, we have the ultimate alternative, hopefully never to be used again,” he added.

Mideast analyst Sina Toosie, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, noted in a response to the post that the “‘ultimate alternative’ sounds a lot like a nuclear threat,” adding: It’s “not the first time Trump has hinted at it.”

Earlier in the war in April, Trump vowed that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” if Iran failed to agree to his terms to end the war he launched. Iran didn’t meet his demands and Trump didn’t deliver on his threat.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on Trump’s latest threat.

Read more Arrest Made Outside Nancy Guthrie’s Home

“Nuclear escalation” could conceivably be under consideration by a president who views it as the “clearest path out of humiliation and stalemate,” the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists warned last month. “That risk should not be dismissed as fanciful,” it added.

Trump vowed in his Truth Social post that the latest Iran agreement, a memorandum of understanding, would be signed Sunday. “It’s gonna get done,” he told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. Trump said that Iran has agreed not to build or acquire nuclear weapons “in any way, shape, or form,” and it will open the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, however, denied plans for a Sunday signing, and said a framework “has not yet been finalized.”

The path to peace hasn’t been easy. On Friday, Trump blasted Iranian leaders as “dishonorable” after information was leaked to Iranian news agency IRNA about the agreement notably different than the one described by him. He called the account “fake news” that “bears no relation to the truth.”

According to the leaked information, also reported in Reuters, discussions about nuclear weapons will take place in the future in a 60-day window. The U.S. would also reportedly drop sanctions against Iranian oil exports and would release billions in dollars in frozen Iranian assets in exchange for opening the Strait, according to that version.