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Donald Trump has threatened to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges if it does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz, after US forces pulled off a daring rescue of an injured airman whose fighter jet was shot down over the country on Friday.
The US president reiterated his deadline for Iran to reopen the crucial shipping lane by midnight on Monday in an expletive-laden social media post.
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday.
“There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
Iran has brought shipping traffic through the critical waterway to a near halt since the war started, triggering a global energy crisis and surging petrol prices.
Attacks on “objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population” are prohibited under international law, and legal scholars say that the actions Trump has threatened could constitute war crimes.
Iran’s top military commander warned that “the gates of Hell would be opened” if the US and Israel proceeded with attacks against the Islamic republic’s energy infrastructure.
“We will target without restriction all infrastructure used by the terrorist US military, as well as the infrastructure of the Zionist regime, with devastating and continuous strikes,” said Major General Ali Abdollahi of the armed forces’ main command centre.
Trump made his new threats after announcing the “miraculous” rescue of the missing US airman early on Sunday morning.
US forces had mounted a frantic search and rescue mission on Friday after the two-man F-15E was shot down over a remote and mountainous corner of Iran.
The plane’s pilot was swiftly rescued but a weapon systems officer, whose parachute had landed in a different location, remained on the ground for two days. Trump said the airman was “being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour”. Special operations forces extracted the missing aviator, according to two people familiar with US military operations
Iran has found a powerful point of leverage in its retaliation against the US and Israeli bombardment by threatening the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil transited before the war.
On Sunday, Trump told a Fox News reporter that the Iranians were “negotiating now” and that the two sides could reach a deal as soon as Monday.
“If they don’t make a deal and fast, I’m considering blowing everything up and taking over the oil,” the US president said, according to Fox News.
Trump also reportedly acknowledged that his administration had sought to arm Iranian resistance factions. “We sent guns to the protesters, a lot of them,” Fox News reported Trump as saying. “And I think the Kurds took the guns.”
The US, Israel and Iran continued to escalate attacks on Sunday.
Operations at the Borouge petrochemicals plant in Abu Dhabi were suspended after three fires were caused by debris from aerial interceptions, the emirate’s media office said on Sunday. No injuries were reported at the damaged facility.
The apparent retaliation for strikes on an Iranian petrochemicals factory marks an uptick in the Islamic republic’s targeting of industrial facilities in the capital of the United Arab Emirates. A previous Iranian strike on the Emirates Global Aluminium smelter in Abu Dhabi could take up to a year to repair.
Late on Saturday, Iran launched strikes on water and power infrastructure in Kuwait, the Gulf country said, causing “serious material damage” to electricity and desalination facilities.
Kuwait’s Ministries Complex, the headquarters of the oil and finance ministries, was also hit by a drone attack. No injuries were recorded in either attack.
Israel said it had bombed an Iranian petrochemical plant, which it claimed the country’s armed forces used to produce materials for weapons including ballistic missiles. In a video statement, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Mahshahr Special Petrochemical Zone part of Tehran’s “money machine”.
Following a similar strike against Iranian petrochemical facilities last month, Tehran retaliated by striking energy infrastructure in the Gulf, inflicting severe damage on the world’s largest liquefied natural gas facility in Qatar.
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