President Trump escalated his threats against Iran to their most extreme level Tuesday, warning in a Truth Social post that an entire civilization faced annihilation if Tehran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz before his 8 p.m. ET deadline.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump wrote Tuesday morning. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” The president left open the possibility of a diplomatic resolution, adding that with new Iranian leadership, “maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen.”
Trump previously threatened to destroy Iran’s bridges and power plants if no deal was reached, and has mentioned other targets, including oil and water infrastructure. He has also threatened to hit Iran’s oil wells and water desalination plants.
The threatened strikes drew swift condemnation from human rights and international law experts. Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said Trump was “openly threatening collective punishment, targeting not the Iranian military but the Iranian people.” Roth told NBC News that attacking civilians is a war crime, as is making threats intended to terrorize a civilian population.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot joined a growing chorus of international voices calling for restraint, saying attacks targeting civilian and energy infrastructure “are barred by the rules of war, international law.”
Iran has shown defiance in response. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps called Trump’s threats “baseless,” warning that “if attacks on non-civilian targets are repeated, our retaliatory response will be carried out far more forcefully and on a much wider scale.” Iran also threatened to plunge the entire Middle East into darkness if the United States attacked its energy infrastructure.
Inside Iran, civilians braced for what could come. Iranian official Alireza Rahimi issued a video message calling on “all young people, athletes, artists, students and university students and their professors” to form human chains around power plants. A young teacher in Tehran, speaking anonymously for her safety to PBS, said that many opponents of Iran’s Islamic system had hoped Trump’s attacks would quickly topple the government, but now fears the war will only spread chaos.
“If we don’t have the internet, and if we don’t have electricity, water, and gas, we’re really going back to the Stone Age,” she told the Associated Press.
Vice President JD Vance, who is involved in the Iran diplomacy, said at a press conference in Budapest that intense negotiations would take place right up to Trump’s deadline. Officials involved in diplomatic efforts said talks were ongoing, but Iran had rejected the latest American proposal, and it was unclear whether a deal would come in time.
In another move that appears to be part of the U.S. pressure campaign, the U.S. military Tuesday morning attacked dozens of military targets on the strategic Kharg Island.
Iranian officials have not released a recent death toll, but the U.S.-based rights group HRANA puts the total of those killed at almost 3,400, including more than 1,600 civilians. Thirteen U.S. service members have been killed, and two more died of noncombat causes.
The Strait of Hormuz, a crucial transport route for much of the world’s energy supplies, was closed shortly after the U.S. and Israel launched their assault on Iran in late February. As Trump’s war against Iran sparked a historic global energy crisis, key military allies including Japan and the Philippines have sought to strike agreements directly with Iran to stabilize their economies.
Democratic lawmakers were vocal in their opposition. Congressman Jim McGovern stressed that the U.S. military is required to disobey “illegal orders,” calling Trump’s threat “evil” and saying it violated both federal and international law.
This is a developing story.
