Trump threat that Iranian civilization will ‘die’ stirs anxiety in Charlotte
President Donald Trump threatened to end Iranian civilization if the country does not open up the Strait of Hormuz for shipping traffic, issuing an 8 p.m. Tuesday deadline for leaders to comply.
He said “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” in a Tuesday post on Truth Social.
Those words troubled Charlotte Iranian-Americans like Mansour Mishamandani. The longtime resident came to the U.S. in 1978 and became a citizen during the Clinton era.
“I’ve lived in Charlotte longer than 97% of the people who live (here) right now,” he said. “I tell that to my kids who were born there. Hey, I’ve been here longer than you—don’t call me a foreigner.”
Despite his deep roots in North Carolina, most of his family is back in Iran. He spoke of his three sisters currently in Tehran with anxiety.
“I’m totally upset about it, and I don’t like it,” Mishamandani said. “I’m very nervous ... and they are very stressed and scared.”
Concerns grow in Charlotte’s Iranian-American community
As of Tuesday afternoon, Iranian leaders showed no public signs of opening the waterway, even with the deadline only hours away.
The president’s grave warnings previously include the destruction of bridges and power plants if Iran failed to restore the global oil trade through the Strait of Hormuz, which sits between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman in the Middle East.
Despite Trump’s “civilization will die” post, Charlotte resident Narges Ahani said many Iranians have become desensitized to his social media comments. But like Mishamandani, concerns for family remain high. She came to the U.S. in 2016 as an international student and currently works as data scientist.
Mishamandani said the war has already damaged his home country. He doesn’t want things to get worse.
In late February, Trump waged war on Iran, claiming he was eliminating an imminent nuclear threat. U.S. and Israeli forces hit military sites and killed Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
This occurred after tens of thousands of Iranians protested at the end of last year after their currency crashed. They wanted to end the Islamic Republic system. Security forces killed thousands, and the government cut off public internet access. A network of medical professionals around Iran estimates that more than 30,000 protesters died, according to The Guardian.
During the early January uprising, Ahani lost two friends, one of whom was a father of two. She is not against intervention. However, she disagrees with the U.S. and Israeli militaries destroying infrastructure such as oil refineries or power plants. She said it hurts the future of the nation rather than immediately weakening the current government’s grip on power.
Instead, she would like the U.S. to help by providing Iranians with internet access.
“The situation is very complicated for Iranians,” Ahani said. “On one hand, we are facing a brutal government that kills us. On the other hand, we have Trump and this war.”
This story was originally published April 7, 2026 at 2:58 PM.
