Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social account this Saturday a series of provocative content that reignited speculation about a potential military escalation against Iran, including an AI-generated image with the text "It Was The Calm Before The Storm" and an animation of a U.S. warship targeting an Iranian-flagged aircraft.
Trump's posts on Truth Social depict, in the first one, a figure wearing a MAGA hat and a "Trump Commander in Chief" shirt pointing at the viewer from a warship in stormy waters, with Iranian-flagged boats in the background.
In a second post, Trump shared an animated audio clip that includes the phrase "Okay, we have it in our sight. Fire!" —"De acuerdo, lo tenemos en la mira. ¡Fuego!"—, accompanied by images of a U.S. destroyer targeting an Iranian aircraft.
He also published the same clip with the phrase in French: “D'accord, nous l'avons dans notre configuration. Feu. Boum.” —“Okay, we have it in our setup. Fire. Boom.”— shared simultaneously through the official communications account of the White House, Rapid Response 47.
These posts come just five days after Trump starred in a highly publicized scene in the Oval Office, where he mimicked with onomatopoeic sounds the destruction of Iranian missiles, exclaiming "ba ba ba ba ba," and claimed that the Patriot systems had shot down 111 missiles that Iran had launched at a U.S. ship.
The Arab media Arab Times covered the publications under the headline "Trump hints at a possible resumption of attacks on Iran," interpreting them as a direct warning signal.
The phrase "calm before the storm" has a precise origin: on October 5, 2017, Trump uttered it at the White House during a meeting with high-ranking military officials, responding with a deliberate "You'll find out" when the press asked what he meant.
That ambiguity was later appropriated by the QAnon movement as the starting point for its conspiratorial narrative about a great "storm" against Trump's enemies.
By using it again now, Trump consciously reactivates that heavily charged symbolism at a time of heightened military tension, combining geopolitical provocation with a memetic communication strategy that his team has intensified in recent weeks.
The military context is one of significant wear and tear: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth admitted before the Senate that nearly 50% of the Patriot interceptors and 30% of the Tomahawk missiles had been used up in seven weeks of operations, and that rebuilding the arsenal could take months or years.
Public opinion in the United States shows a strong rejection of confrontation: according to a poll by The Washington Post, ABC News, and Ipsos published on May 1, 61% of Americans considered Trump's war against Iran a mistake.
Trump, however, has maintained a firm stance: "We are not going to allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon," he stated from the Oval Office, where he also claimed that the United States has destroyed Iran's navy, air force, and air defense system.
Filed under: