Tehran unveils huge ‘We will kill Trump’ billboard as war rhetoric sharpens on US election day
Iran unveiled a massive billboard in Tehran on Tuesday pledging to kill US President Donald Trump, in the sharpest escalation yet of the capital’s official wartime street rhetoric, even as diplomats worked to avert a return to full-scale war.
Iran unveiled a massive billboard in Tehran on Tuesday pledging to kill US President Donald Trump, bringing the capital's official wartime rhetoric to a new level on the very day Americans were voting in midterm elections. The billboard, towering over the busy Enghelab Square in central Tehran, read “We will kill Trump” and depicted the American president behind bars with his head bowed, according to AFP journalists and photographs from the scene. Another billboard nearby showed Trump alongside Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, their faces bloodied and their suits ragged, against the background of worn-out American and Israeli flags. Dozens of people gathered in the square waving red flags and carrying banners reading “There will be blood”, while calling for revenge for the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the United States and Israeli attacks of 28 February that started the war. The timing was pointed: the displays went up as Trump faced a crucial midterm vote at home, with voter discontent driven in part by the Iran war and by higher fuel prices. Across the city, in the busy Tajrish Square in northern Tehran, an open-air exhibition featured paintings of Trump, including one showing him with his face lying bloodied on the ground as a foot pressed down on his head. Another work used a bomb to obscure his face. The Media Line also reported a life-size mock prison cell in Tajrish Square, occupied by an actor impersonating the American president, which municipal authorities have described as an effort to draw attention to Iran's demands for justice. New designs of billboards and displays mocking Trump and vowing revenge have frequently been set up around Tehran since the war began, but Tuesday's display was described by AFP as bringing the official rhetoric to a new level. The distinction matters: these are not graffiti or protest art, but state-sponsored displays in some of the capital's most prominent public squares. State-sponsored billboards and murals have been a fixture of Iran's public spaces since the 1979 Islamic revolution, used to honour allies, celebrate military figures and send political messages to adversaries, particularly the United States and Israel. In wartime, that tradition has become a daily instrument of public messaging, aimed as much at a domestic audience as at the outside world. The displays also sit in sharp contrast with the diplomatic language coming from other parts of the Iranian government on the same day. President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Tuesday that a return to war would benefit no one, hours after Trump confirmed that American forces had struck an Iranian anti-aircraft facility on Qeshm Island, which he described as a minor attack. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, meanwhile, said talks with Saudi Arabia were ongoing and that intensive indirect exchanges with Washington were continuing through mediators. That contrast captures a tension that has run through the Iranian position for months. One strand of the government is negotiating, through Qatar and Pakistan, over a draft deal that could reopen the Strait of Hormuz and pause the fighting. Another strand is using the capital's streets to promise revenge for a leader killed in the opening strikes of the war, and to signal to its own supporters that no settlement will mean forgetting that loss. Trump himself has said that a deal with Tehran “could happen”, and oil prices fell sharply on Monday on hopes of a settlement, before recovering some ground after the Qeshm strike was confirmed. Whether the billboards are intended as pressure on Washington, as reassurance for a domestic audience, or simply as the latest expression of a propaganda campaign that has its own momentum, is not something the displays themselves reveal. What they do reveal is the political atmosphere in which any deal would have to be sold. A government that has just put a death threat against the American president on one of its busiest squares would face obvious difficulties presenting a compromise with Washington as a victory at home. Equally, an American administration that has just been threatened in those terms would face its own difficulties presenting concessions to Tehran as strength. For now, the billboards stand as a public marker of how far apart the two sides remain in tone, even while their intermediaries continue to talk. The diplomacy has not stopped, but neither has the rhetoric, and on Tuesday in Tehran the rhetoric was louder than it has been at any point since the war began.Advertisement · Google AdSense 728×90 / 320×100
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