President Donald Trump issued an expletive-laden threat to bomb Iran’s civilian power plants and bridges if it did not meet a new deadline of Tuesday to open the Strait of Hormuz.
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday.
He signed off the message: “Praise be to Allah.”
In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Trump claimed that he was negotiating with Iran’s leaders and there was a “good chance” of a deal by Monday. “If they don’t make a deal and fast, I’m considering blowing everything up and taking over the oil,” he said.
Read more: Iranians Alarmed by Trump’s Threat to Strike Power Plants
Trump has made several similar threats to bomb Iran’s power plants, only to postpone or move deadlines after claiming progress in talks with Iranian leaders.
Under international humanitarian law, attacks on objects “indispensable to the survival of the civilian population” are prohibited and may constitute war crimes. The law also stipulates that collateral civilian harm from strikes not be “excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”
The destruction of power plants could lead to widespread blackouts and impact hospitals, water treatment facilities and food supply chains.
Agnes Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, describedTrump’s post as “revolting.”
“Running out of language to denounce and condemn. Iranian Civilians will be the first to suffer from the destruction of power plants and bridges. No heat, no electricity, no water, no capacity to move or to flee, and all that it means for their right to life,” she wrote on X in response to the threat.
The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway in the Persian Gulf that has been effectively closed to shipping by Iranian strikes since Feb. 28, when the United States and Israel launched an attack on Iran that killed the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
In the month since, Iran’s counterattacks have struck U.S. bases across the Gulf, strategic Gulf infrastructure, and drastically slowed shipping in the Strait, causing a global shortage of oil and energy supplies, and sending gas prices in the U.S. skyrocketing.
Iran has threatened an energy war in response
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf has responded to Trump’s previous threats to attack its power plants by saying it would respond by targeting Gulf and U.S.-linked energy facilities in the region, including “critical infrastructure, energy infrastructure, and oil facilities” throughout the region.
Iran’s joint military command repeated that threat on Sunday.
“We once again repeat: if you commit aggression again and strike civilian facilities, our responses will be more forceful,” a spokesman said in comments published by the IRNA news agency.
A key advisor to Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, also threatened the closure of another key waterway that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. Ali Akbar Velayati warned in a social media post on Sunday that Iran could close the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
Read more: What Is the Strait of Hormuz and Why Is It at the Center of the Iran War?
“If the White House thinks of repeating its stupid mistakes, it will quickly realize that the flow of global energy and trade can be disrupted with a single signal,” he wrote on X.
Yemen’s Houthi movement, an ally of Iran, announced its entry into the regional conflict last month.
While Iran has disrupted global markets by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, the Houthis played a similarly outsized role in upending global shipping between November 2023 and January 2025 when they attacked over 100 merchant vessels in the Red Sea in a campaign of solidarity with Palestinians during the Gaza war.
Thomas Juneau, a professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and an associate fellow with Chatham House, recently told TIME that if the group decided to attack shipping on the Red Sea again, it could have a significant impact on the global economy.
“The Houthis would cause a much more important impact on the war if they were to start targeting maritime shipping in the Red Sea and try to close the Bab al-Mandab Strait. This would amplify the war’s already strong impact on oil and natural gas prices and on the global economy,” he said.
Attacks on the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait would likely disrupt traffic through the Suez Canal, through which around 22% of global seaborne container trade travels each year.
Israel strikes a petrochemical plant in Iran
A low-level energy war may have already begun, however. Israel struck a major petrochemical plant in the Iranian city of Mahshahr on Saturday.
Hamed Shams, the head of marketing and communications for the oil ministry’s petrochemical industries, said the attacks targeted infrastructure that supplies electricity to the petrochemical plant but also to 500,000 people in Khuzestan Province in the summer.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the plant was part of Iran’s “money machine, which funds their war of terror against us and against the world.”
“We will continue to hit them, as I promised,” he said.
Iran responded on Sunday by striking power plants and a petrochemical plant in Kuwait, authorities there said. Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity also said a water desalination plant was targeted. Bahrain’s official news agency said an Iranian drone attack caused a fire at one of the national oil company’s storage facilities.
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