Tehran responds to Trump’s menace by saying all US power infrastructure within the area can be focused if Iran is attacked.
Printed On 22 Mar 2026
United States President Donald Trump has threatened to assault Iran’s energy crops if freedom of navigation isn’t totally restored on the Strait of Hormuz inside 48 hours, a dramatic escalation because the US-Israeli war on Iran continues for a fourth week.
The assertion on Saturday got here as Trump faces growing strain to safe the important waterway that Iran has promised to maintain closed to “enemy ships”, resulting in soaring oil prices and plunging inventory markets.
“If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, inside 48 HOURS from this actual cut-off date, the USA of America will hit and obliterate their numerous POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST,” Trump, who’s in his Florida dwelling for the weekend, wrote on Reality Social at 23:44 GMT.
He didn’t specify which plant he was referring to as the most important.
Following Trump’s menace, the Iranian military stated it could goal all power infrastructure belonging to the US within the area if Iran’s gas and power infrastructure have been attacked.
Trump’s escalatory feedback got here barely a day after he talked about “winding down” the struggle that he launched alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on February 28, when the US and Iran have been engaged in nuclear negotiations.
In a social media submit on Friday, Trump stated the US was “getting very near assembly our targets as we contemplate winding down our nice Navy efforts within the Center East”.
Key waterway
Transport site visitors by means of the Strait of Hormuz, the place a fifth of the world’s oil and fuel passes by means of throughout peacetime, has nearly floor to a halt for the reason that early days of the struggle.
Iran has stated the Strait of Hormuz is open to all besides the US and its allies, with Minister of International Affairs Abbas Araghchi saying final week that he had been “approached by plenty of international locations” searching for secure passage for his or her vessels.
“That is as much as our navy to resolve,” he told the US television network CBS, including {that a} group of ships from “totally different international locations” had been allowed to go, with out offering particulars.
The top of US Central Command, Admiral Brad Cooper, asserted on Saturday that Iran’s potential to assault vessels on the strait had been “degraded” after US fighter jets dropped 5,000-pound (about 2,300kg) bombs on an underground Iranian coastal facility storing antiship cruise missiles and cellular launchers earlier this week.
The strike additionally destroyed “intelligence assist websites and missile radar relays” used to observe ship actions, Cooper stated.
Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Manuel Rapalo stated there gave the impression to be a “hole between what the White Home seems to need within the Strait of Hormuz and what the US navy says they’ve already achieved”.
“It’s fascinating, to say on the very least, to listen to Trump speaking a couple of main escalation, given the truth that we’ve been listening to all through the course of the day how a lot injury the US has finished, supposedly, to Iran’s potential to focus on oil tankers and vessels navigating by means of the strait.”
