TEHRAN – President Masoud Pezeshkian has issued one of the strongest condemnations yet of U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent threat to send Iran back to “the Stone Ages,” calling the statement equivalent to advocating “a massive war crime” and warning the world not to remain silent in the face of such rhetoric.

In a post on X, Pezeshkian quoted a conversation with his Finnish counterpart, asking: “Does threatening to send an entire nation back to the Stone Age mean anything other than a massive war crime?” He added that history is filled with those who “paid a heavy price for their silence in the face of criminals,” urging global actors to recognize the humanitarian and legal implications of threats that imply the destruction of a country’s modern infrastructure.

Trump’s comments, made during a prime-time address, vowed that the U.S. would intensify attacks on Iranian infrastructure and hit the country “extremely hard … bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong,” unless Tehran agreed to U.S. demands amid the ongoing conflict.

Critics in Iran and around the world have portrayed the threat as dehumanizing and potentially constituting a war crime under international law, which forbids deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure and essential services. For many in Iran, such rhetoric underscores what they see as a longstanding pattern of hostile U.S. policy aimed at undermining Iranian sovereignty and dignity. Pezeshkian’s criticism is part of a broader Iranian response that rejects any suggestion that Tehran initiated conflict, emphasizing that Iran has only acted in defense against external aggression.

Iranian military figures and public voices have also rebuked the “stone age” comments, framing them as insults to a civilization with thousands of years of history, and emphasizing that it is the United States that risks suffering losses if the conflict continues.

Pezeshkian’s message was not just aimed at Washington but at the international community, urging watchdogs such as the World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross to take notice of threats that go far beyond ordinary wartime language.

While the United States insists its military objectives are focused and justified, the escalation in rhetoric has sparked fear of a wider humanitarian catastrophe, with critics warning that normalizing language about reducing a nation to pre-industrial conditions is a dangerous departure from global norms and invites a disastrous escalation of violence.