Jason Carter, president of the Carter Center’s governing board and former President Carter’s grandson, called Trump’s blanket threat against Iranian citizens and culture an “un-American” and “un-Christian” outrage.

“It violates every conceivable moral code,” Carter said in a video statement, and if carried out would violate U.S. and international law and all “accepted principles of human rights.”

The United States, Carter said, “must be better than Donald Trump’s unbridled and dangerous rhetoric.”

Jimmy Carter, who died in 2024, was in office during the 1979 Iranian revolution that ushered in the ayatollah’s government.

“The Islamist government of Iran has been our enemy, including an enemy of my family,” Jason Carter said, “but the people of Iran have never been our enemy.”

The younger Carter said his grandfather would urge “Democrats, Republicans and especially Christians who worship the prince of peace to stand up and say, ‘Enough is enough.’”