President Donald Trump renewed his threat to destroy Iranian bridges and power plants if the country doesn’t soon agree to reopen the world oil trade through the Strait of Hormuz, arguing that the Iranian people supported the U.S. and Israeli bombing.
“The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night,” he said Monday, issuing a deadline of Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern and pledging destruction by midnight if leaders don’t comply. The remarks came during a White House briefing where officials detailed the rescue of two U.S. airmen whose F-15E was shot down Friday over Iran.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Iranian officials were embarrassed by their failure to capture the U.S. aviator who was injured and stranded in rugged hostile territory for two days. Still, the Iranians showed no interest in surrendering, rejecting a U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal on Monday.
Trump at once touted the success of U.S. military operations and showed frustration with the elusive resolution to the expensive and unpopular five-week-old war. He has postponed his threat to bomb power plants twice before.
“We’re the winner. We won. Okay?” the president said in the White House briefing room. “They are militarily defeated. The only thing they have is the psychology of, oh, we’re going to drop a couple of mines in the water.”
He brushed off concern that his threat to bomb infrastructure would violate the Geneva Conventions, a series of treaties the U.S. signed after World War II to limit dangers to civilians.
“We don’t want that to happen,” Trump said. “We may even get involved with helping them rebuild their nation. And you know what? If that’s the case, the last thing we want to do is start with power plants, which are among the most expensive things.”
Trump said U.S. spies had eavesdropped on conversations among Iranian civilians indicating support for the bombing. He started the war by calling on the country’s people to rise up and overthrow the government.
“They would be willing to suffer that in order to have freedom,” he said. “We’ve had numerous intercepts: ‘Please keep bombing’ — bombs that are dropping near their homes — ‘Please keep bombing. Do it.’”
Earlier Monday, Iran refused to back down, saying such attacks would be met with a strong response. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told his French counterpart in a call that Trump’s threat “amounts to normalizing war crimes and genocide.” Kazem Gharibabadi, a deputy foreign minister, said on X that Trump’s threats constitute “individual criminal responsibility” and that Iran will retaliate with a “regret-inducing” response.
Mohammad Akraminia, an Iranian army spokesman, said Sunday that deterrence for future war relies on “bringing the enemy to genuine regret,” the Tasnim news agency reported.
Sunday’s rescue operation of a missing U.S. airman averted what could have been a politically catastrophic situation for the White House had Iran taken him as a prisoner of war. But the downing of the F-15E and another U.S. military jet, an A-10 attack plane whose pilot navigated into Kuwait airspace before ejecting, raised questions about Trump’s exuberant claims of U.S. air dominance and the destruction of Iran’s air defenses.
Trump revealed on Monday that the F-15 was likely hit by a shoulder-fired missile known as a MANPAD, or man-portable air-defense system — a relatively cheap weapon that can be fired by a single person on the ground, and uses an aircraft’s heat signature to track and target it. Despite the country’s weakened defenses, shoulder-fired missiles remain a significant threat to U.S. warplanes because of how many Iran has and how easy to hide they are.
Trump had previously claimed the U.S. had eliminated Iran’s ability to defend from air attacks, saying on March 24 that “they can’t do a thing about it” and a week later that “they have nothing to shoot.”
“We took out a lot, but they still have,” he said on Monday. ““So it’s not like, you know, they’re totally whatever.”
A rescue mission was launched almost immediately for the downed crew members. Two HH-60 Pave Hawk Air Force Special Operations Command helicopters, an HC-130 Combat King II, A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft and drones began circling and suppressing fighters on the ground until they could rescue the F-15 pilot. In addition to the downed A-10, whose pilot ejected and survived, one of the helicopters involved in the rescue took ground fire, injuring members of the crew.
The F-15’s weapons system officer, who was wounded, remained missing after the pilot was rescued. Wounded and bleeding, he had landed far from the pilot and began to move up a 7,000 foot ridgeline to hide. For hours, there was no news on where he was.
The CIA had eyes on the mountain ridge, and late in the night in Iran, Ratcliffe said he informed Trump, “We’re seeing someone moving on the mountain.” For 45 minutes, the agency kept its camera on the form, not sure what it was. Then “he stood up,” Trump said. “And they said, ‘We have him.’”
More than 150 aircraft soon swarmed different sites to throw off Iranians on the ground as to the location of the airman.
Israel, which assisted in the rescue operation by providing intelligence, announced Monday that it had killed Maj. Gen. Majid Khademi, the head of intelligence for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Khademi’s death was confirmed by Iranian news agencies. His predecessor, Mohammad Kazemi, was killed in an Israeli strike during the 12-day war in June.
“Iran’s leaders live with a sense of being hunted,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement. “We will continue to hunt them down, one by one.”
Iranian officials continued to reject a 15-point U.S. ceasefire proposal, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei saying at a news conference Monday that Iran finds it “excessively demanding, unreasonable, and illogical.”
On Monday, Baqaei said ceasefires often serve to create mere pauses, allowing the United States to regroup and strategize for future attacks, Tasnim reported.
“Deadlines shouldn’t cause us to have the slightest doubt in defending our country,” Baqaei said.
He said the “transfer of messages continues naturally” between intermediaries. “But negotiation is in no way compatible with ultimatums, with crime, with threats of committing war crimes.”
Israel also struck a major Iranian petrochemical facility in Asaluyeh on Monday, after hitting the country’s other key plant in Mahshahr over the weekend, according to Katz. Together, the facilities are responsible for about 85 percent of Iran’s petrochemical exports, Katz said, and “have now been disabled and are no longer operational.”
Asked at a Monday news briefing how such attacks on dual-use infrastructure square with negotiations, Nadav Shoshani, an Israel Defense Forces spokesman, said: “The war is going as talks are going … Iran will pay a price as the time goes by.” Shoshani said Iran has previously “a strategy of stalling” and using negotiations to “create time” — an accusation Iranian officials leveled against the United States the same day.
António Costa, president of the European Council, said attacks on civilian infrastructure, emphasizing energy facilities, is “illegal and unacceptable.” He said he stressed this in a call with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
“The Iranian civilian population is the main victim of the Iranian regime. It would also be the main victim of a widening of the military campaign,” Costa wrote on X.
Strikes continued across the region. More than 2,000 people have been killed in Iran during the war, according to the International Federation of Red Cross.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said at least 1,497 people have been killed in attacks, including an attack overnight on a team of paramedics that killed two. The ministry condemned“systematic Israeli attacks” on the country’s health sector. More than 50 people have been killed in attacks affecting health care groups in Lebanon, accordingto U.N. and World Health Organization representatives in the country.
In Israel, an Iranian missile directly hit — but reportedly did not detonate — a seven-story building in the northern port city of Haifa. After searching through rubble overnight, search-and-rescue teams recovered the bodies of four people killed and trapped under the rubble.
Westfall reported from Jerusalem. Alex Horton in Washington, Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv and Suzan Haidamous in Beirut contributed to this report.
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