Armageddon now! Deconstructing the language of US-Iran war

Hopefully, this pause in hostilities will also end the pulverisation and coarsening of language that has marked foul-mouthed hyperboles by Trump and his comrades, targeting Tehran.

Plumbing a new low in war-time lingo, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly hurled expletives-laden threat to Iranian leaders on Truth Social like kamikaze missiles, laced with explosive diatribes. Like a deranged prophet, Trump spewed pure vitriol.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” he wrote. “There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!”

Look at the choice of expressions, uttered like an adrenalin-fuelled adolescent who sees the war with Iran as a lurid video game show. Tuesday is Power Plant Day and Bridge Day, downed with dollops of coke and f-words! One can compose a perverse dans macabre and surreally dark symphony for every day of the week…

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth could barely conceal his malicious glee. He rhapsodised poetically about “death and destruction from the sky all day long”.

All said, the F-word takes the cake, indicating all verbal gloves are off as far as MAGA Maestro Trump is concerned…

Irony, Iran-style

Iran, a much older civilisation that can boast of Shiraz wine and finest love poetry, has reacted in its own quintessential sardonic manner.   “Swearing and throwing insults are how sore loser brats behave,” said the Iranian Embassy in India.

Iran’s Embassy in Thailand warned that the president needed to watch his “language.” “When you listen to him, close your eyes … you can almost see a Stone Age #caveman in a zebra hide, brandishing a club and treating savagery like everyday life,” wrote Tehran’s Embassy in Austria on its social media handle.

“A stone-age caveman in a zebra hide” – this is more like a sophisticated riposte befitting a more cultured dueller.

Verbal shadow-boxing apart, this perverse word-play lays bare an unprecedented callousness and insensitivity on the part of powers-that-be the US-Israel-Iran has exposed.

Age of Dysphemism

Euphemism is now passe. We are now living in the age of dysphemism. In a dystopian dysfunctional world, anything and everything goes.

Trump and his cronies revel in dysphemism and invectives. “This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight,” the macho Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said. “We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

And here is Trump at his sadistic flamboyance.  “Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags [ie, Iranians] today. They’ve been killing innocent people all over the world for 47 years, and now I, as the 47th President of the United States of America, am killing them. What a great honour it is to do so!”

A great honour indeed! The word honour was never abused so recklessly!

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has taken verbal lethality to another level. “We are not defenders anymore. We are warriors: trained to kill the enemy and break their will.” Miraculously, he is also capable of flashes of poetic inspiration. Announcing the sinking of an Iranian warship by a US torpedo, he spoke mystically about the doomed crew’s “quiet death”.

This war is anything but a quiet death for thousands, including children in an Iranian school, who perished amid a hail of explosions, inflicted with maniacal exuberance.

Framing the war in biblical terms, Trump designated it as “Operation Epic Fury,” with ominous tones of Armageddon and a Greek tragedy. For those who equate Furies with furious, it’s time to dive into Greek mythology. The Furies (or Erinyes) in Greek mythology are three terrifying chthonic goddesses of vengeance—Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone—who relentlessly pursue those who commit crimes against the natural order, particularly matricide, patricide, perjury, and sins against the gods. Often depicted with snake-entwined hair, bat wings, and black skin, they reside in the Underworld, punishing the damned and driving wrongdoers to madness.

When the dust and all the sound and the fury settle down, there should be a trial, not just for mindless cold-blooded murder, but also for naming and shaming those who committed crimes against language. Besides, this was no operation – operation suggests a surgery to deliver a person or society back to heath and wellness. This was an operation designed cynically to assert the mantra of might is right. This is not peace through strength.  War is not peace, to twist the famous line in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. This is Twenty Twenty-Six, and old cliches don’t hold.

2026:

In the 10-point peace plan proposed by Iran, which forms the basis for on-and-off negotiations, there is no mention of stopping the slaughtering of language by the warring parties. As real peace is still elusive, it’s time to put the clause about language in the peace plan. After all, words we use to speak about each other will also determine whether we will have war or peace.

According to Emile Simpson, the author of “War from the ground up: Twenty-first century combat as politics,” the language of war provides an “interpretive structure” that gives meaning to the use of force — and to war itself. If the language is thoughtful and measured, it could lead to peace. But if you keep threatening “death, fire and fury will reign [sic] upon them” and you love bombing “just for fun,” then you will have a daily Armageddon. The language and grammar of war should make way for words that heal and shows cooperation, compassion, respect, and friendship. Otherwise, there will be no forgetting and forgiveness.

In another context, W.H. Auden wrote memorably in “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”:

Time that is intolerant

Of the brave and innocent,

And indifferent in a week

To a beautiful physique,

Worships language and forgives

Everyone by whom it lives;

Pardons cowardice, conceit,

Lays its honours at their feet.

This time around, however, there won’t be any forgiveness for cowardice, conceit! Never forget, Never hurl abuses! Amen!