Tehran’s “We Will Kill Trump” Billboard Is Not a Peace Signal

Written By B.J. Dichter, Posted on November 7, 2026

While Americans were voting, the Iranian regime put a message over Enghelab Square in Tehran that does not require a translator.

“We will kill Trump.”

That is not graffiti from a random mob. The Straits Times, citing AFP, reports a giant state-backed billboard depicting the U.S. president behind bars with his head bowed, unveiled Nov. 3 — election day in the United States. Nearby, another display showed Trump, Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with bloodied faces against worn U.S. and Israeli flags. Crowds waved red flags and banners reading “There will be blood,” calling for revenge for slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killed in the U.S.-Israeli strikes that started this war on Feb. 28.

In Tajrish Square, AFP photographed paintings of a bloodied Trump under a boot, a bomb over his face, and a life-sized jail cell with an actor playing the president while a screen looped strike damage. This is how the Islamic Republic does public diplomacy.

They cheered the blue wave for a reason

I am not interested in pearl-clutching about “tone.” I am interested in what the regime thinks it just learned.

Tehran cast the Democratic midterm surge as proof that Trump’s war policy is collapsing and that America is in decline. AP reports Iranian officials celebrated the results as a rebuke to Trump; Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Americans had “said NO TO WAR.” That is not analysis. That is a hostage-taker reading the poll numbers and deciding the ransom just went up. When a government that chants “Death to America,” funds the Houthis and Hezbollah, and spent decades racing toward a nuclear breakout celebrates your election night, you do not get to call it a peace constituency.

The same week, Iranian officials pushed a Qatar channel that still demands sanctions relief, frozen-asset releases and war reparations before real nuclear talks. Mohsen Rezaei told Moscow the Strait of Hormuz stays closed and negotiations stay shut until those conditions are met. That is the offer. The billboard is the attitude behind the offer.

Peace through strength is not a slogan when the other side prints death threats

I support Israel. I support stopping a nuclear Iran. I also think Americans deserve an honest ledger of costs — gas prices, eight months of war, munitions, and the midterm bill Republicans just paid. Honesty about costs is not the same as pretending the people who hang “We Will Kill Trump” over a capital square are partners in regional stability.

State billboards and murals have been a fixture of the regime’s propaganda since 1979, AFP notes. They honor allies, celebrate military figures and threaten the United States and Israel. This week they added an election-day flourish: kill the American president, mock his vice president, smear Israel’s prime minister, then spin Democratic gains as vindication.

If your foreign policy requires you to ignore that, it is not foreign policy. It is cosplay.

The regime that threatens Trump is the regime that wants the bomb

Do not sanitize this. The people running Tehran are not misunderstood nationalists. They are a theocratic security state that answered American votes with a murder billboard and a ransom list.

A serious America can debate strike versus squeeze versus a verified deal. A serious America cannot treat a government that advertises assassinating the U.S. president as a good-faith counterparty while that advertisement is still hanging.

I want the war ended on terms that leave Iran without a nuclear weapon, without a stranglehold on Hormuz and without a propaganda ministry that treats killing an American president as civic art. Anything softer teaches the next ayatollah that billboards work.

The blue wave was a domestic verdict on costs and competence. It was not a permission slip for Tehran. If Democrats and Republicans forget that distinction, the regime will not.

B.J. Dichter

B.J. Dichter is a contributor to The National Telegraph and the producer and creator of Not On Record, a weekly podcast on politics and culture. He produces Open College with philosopher Stephen Hicks and hosts Coffee with BJ, his live show. A former trucker, he was a spokesperson for the 2022 Freedom Convoy and wrote about it in Honking For Freedom. He writes from a classical liberal, libertarian conservative perspective on free speech, Canadian and US politics, Israel and Bitcoin.