President Trump issued harsh threats of widespread destruction in Iran on Monday, just ahead of his Tuesday evening deadline for Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even as both Iranian and U.S. officials signaled that efforts were underway at last-minute diplomacy.
“The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night,” Mr. Trump declared at a White House news conference, which he had called to hail the rescue of two U.S. airmen whose jet was shot down over Iran on Friday.
He added, “We’re giving them until tomorrow 8 o’clock Eastern time, and after that, they’re going to have no bridges, they’re going to have no power plants — Stone Ages.”
Even as he reiterated that threat, Mr. Trump said at the same news conference — where he was joined by the leaders of the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the C.I.A. — that Iranian officials were engaged in productive negotiations. He made the statement after Iran offered a 10-point plan to end the war.
“I can tell you we have an active, willing participant on the side,” Mr. Trump said. “They would like to be able to make a deal. I can’t say anything more than that.”
Earlier in the day, Iran said that it would retaliate forcefully if Mr. Trump carried out his threats to destroy its power plants and bridges. Such attacks could harm millions of Iranian civilians and be considered war crimes under international law, according to legal experts.
“If attacks on civilian targets are repeated, the subsequent phases of our offensive and retaliatory operations will be carried out much more crushingly and extensively,” an Iranian military spokesman, Ebrahim Zolfaghari, said on Monday.
Mr. Trump said that Iranian civilians actually wanted the United States to bomb their power plants and critical infrastructure. “They would be willing to suffer that in order to have freedom,” he said, adding that Iranians who have had bombs dropped near their homes have said: “Please keep bombing. Do it.”
The Iranian plan for ending the war, which was delivered to Pakistan, was not made public, but IRNA, an Iranian state news agency, reported on Monday that the plan included a path toward reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
In its counter proposal, Iran says it wants a permanent end to hostilities; guarantees that it will not be attacked again; and a lifting of all sanctions, including American ones, not just those imposed by the United Nations, according to two Iranian officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discus diplomacy.
The 10-point proposal also calls for Iran and Oman to jointly oversee the Strait of Hormuz and share revenue from tolls they will impose on transiting vessels, the officials said.
“It’s a significant proposal,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll on Monday. “It’s a significant step. It’s not good enough. But it’s a very significant step.”
Diplomatic efforts have yielded little so far, notwithstanding Mr. Trump’s repeated claims of progress, with each side making demands that the other has dismissed as unacceptable. Iranian and U.S. officials have communicated mostly through intermediaries, like Pakistan.
Mr. Trump has threatened repeatedly to bombard Iranian infrastructure, setting deadlines for Tehran to allow shipping to resume through the economically critical strait, and then postponing them. On Sunday, he pushed the deadline back again, this time by a day, to Tuesday at 8 p.m. in the United States..
“We have a plan, because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again,” Mr. Trump said at the White House news conference on Monday. “I mean complete demolition by 12 o’clock. And it’ll happen over a period of four hours if we want it to. We don’t want that to happen.”
Iran’s chokehold on the strait and attacks on Persian Gulf energy production sites have sent fuel prices soaring worldwide since the United States and Israel began bombing Iran on Feb. 28. Mr. Trump has appeared eager to bring down fuel prices and end the war quickly, but Iran has so far resisted making peace on his terms.
On Monday, Mr. Trump again added to the conflicting signals that have characterized the conflict, telling reporters that he wanted the United States to seize Iran’s oil. That would suggest a lengthy — and risky — U.S. presence on Iranian soil.
“Unfortunately, the American people would like to see us come home,” Mr. Trump said. “If it were up to me, I’d take the oil. I’d keep the oil. I would make plenty of money.”
Mr. Trump floated the notion as Iran and Israel launched new attacks on Monday that caused more death and destruction across the region. An Israeli strike in Tehran overnight killed Maj. Gen. Seyed Majid Khademi, the intelligence chief for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the latest blow to Iran’s leadership.
Israel has repeatedly targeted Iranian generals, senior officials and nuclear scientists, and General Khademi was one of several Iranian officials who had occupied their posts for only a few months. He was appointed in June after an Israeli airstrike killed his predecessor and his predecessor’s deputy during a 12-day war between Iran and Israel last year.
Overnight airstrikes also hit one of Iran’s most prestigious academic institutions, Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, prompting outrage from Iranians, including opponents of the regime. Intentional attacks on educational institutions could be a war crime under international law.
Neither the United States nor Israel took responsibility for the strikes, which targeted the school’s information technology center and mosque, according to Iranian state media reports. The university is under Western sanctions that accuse it of ties to the Iranian military and agencies that develop weapons systems.
Its graduates include Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to win the Fields Medal, the most prestigious prize in mathematics.
“This would be akin to a foreign power targeting MIT,” Isa Bria, a former Sharif University student living in the United States, wrote on X. “Academic spaces are sacred. They should not be drawn into conflict.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said his country’s forces had destroyed a major Iranian petrochemical plant, which he said was generating revenue for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Iran’s National Petrochemical Company confirmed an attack on its facilities in southern Iran. The strike occurred two days after Israeli forces struck Iran’s largest petrochemical industrial complex.
Israel also intensified strikes on Lebanon on Monday, pounding the southern suburbs of the capital, Beirut, and the south of the country, as part of its assault on Hezbollah.
In central Israel, at least four cities were hit by falling debris from an Iranian missile barrage, Israel’s Fire and Rescue Authority said. At one site in Ramat Gan, a Tel Aviv suburb, the top floor of a three-story building collapsed.
There were no known fatalities, but on Monday Israeli rescue workers recovered the bodies of four people who had been trapped in the ruins of a residential building in the northern port city of Haifa, 18 hours after it was struck by an Iranian missile .
Iran’s military said it had also fired drones and missiles at a joint Emirati-Israeli drone production center in the United Arab Emirates on Monday. The Emirati defense ministry said the country’s air defense systems had intercepted 12 ballistic missiles, two cruise missiles and 19 drones from Iran on Monday.
Reporting was contributed by Farnaz Fassihi, Gabby Sobelman, Isabel Kershner, Anton Troianovski, Johnatan Reiss and Sanam Mahoozi.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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