Donald Trump pushes Iran war to new phase of escalation
US president’s 48-hour ultimatum to open Strait of Hormuz follows series of tit-for-tat strikes by Tehran
Andrew England in London, Najmeh Bozorghmer in Tehran and Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv
The US and Israel’s war against Iran appeared to enter a new escalatory phase after Donald Trump threatened to strike Iran’s power plants if the Islamic republic did not open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours.
The US president said American forces would “hit and obliterate” Iran’s power plants, “starting with the biggest one” if Tehran did not allow vessels to transit through the blocked strategic waterway through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas normally passes.
Iran, which has already severely disrupted oil and gas supplies by attacking the US’s Gulf allies, warned it would respond to any such strikes by targeting vital infrastructure across the region, including energy facilities and water desalination plants.
Trump’s threat in a post on Truth Social late on Saturday came after an Iranian missile penetrated Israeli air defences to hit the city of Dimona, near Israel’s nuclear research centre and heavy-water reactor.
A few hours later, a second salvo struck the nearby town of Arad, heavily damaging several multistorey residential buildings.
The strikes wounded more than 150 people, eight seriously, in one of the worst attacks in the nation since the US and Israel launched the war more than three weeks ago.
Authorities in Israel said the second strike used a heavier warhead.
Israel’s military chief Eyal Zamir has said the war, which is entering its fourth week, is at its “halfway point” and will continue during the Jewish festival of Passover, which begins at the start of next month.
The country’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Saturday that the US and Israel would “intensify” and “significantly increase” their strikes on Iran in the coming week.
Ali Vaez of the Crisis Group think-tank said the conflict had reached “the next stage of escalation”.
“Neither side has shown they are ready to climb off the escalation ladder and it could get far worse,” he said.
“Going after infrastructure is going to result in scorched earth throughout the region with disastrous consequences.”
Iran launched the attack on Dimona after it accused the US and Israel of attacking its Natanz nuclear facility, evidence that the Islamic regime is following up on its vow to retaliate with strikes against similar targets that are hit in the republic.
Israel is the only nuclear-armed Middle East state, although it does not acknowledge its programme.
After Trump’s threat to bomb Iran’s power stations, Iranian military and political officials warned that the regime would strike energy infrastructure across the region, as well as water desalination plants that many Gulf states rely on.
“Immediately after our country’s electricity and infrastructure are struck, we will consider vital infrastructure, as well as energy and oil facilities throughout the region, to be legitimate targets and will destroy them in an irreversible manner,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, one of Iran’s top wartime leaders, said in a post on X.
Despite the US and Israel launching thousands of strikes on Iran, the regime has demonstrated that it retains the capacity to launch destructive missile and drone attacks against its neighbours.
After Israel attacked energy facilities in the republic’s South Pars vital gas complex last week, Iran swiftly launched a missile attack that caused extensive damage to Qatar’s main liquefied natural gas plants that will take up to five years to repair.
The attacks on QatarEnergy’s Ras Laffan complex involved sophisticated missiles that were manoeuvrable and able to evade US-made Patriot air-defence systems, according to an official briefed on the attack.
Iran also hit a water desalination plant in Bahrain this month, after it accused Israel of bombing a similar facility in the republic.
The UK said on Saturday that Iran fired two missiles at the US-British base in Diego Garcia, the Indian Ocean island about 4,000km from the Islamic republic, indicating that Iran can strike at a far longer range than expected.
The missiles failed to reach the base, with one failing in flight and the other shot down by a US warship, UK officials said.
Iran’s ability to slow the rate of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on energy facilities throughout the oil-rich Gulf has already pushed crude prices to multiyear highs and triggered warnings of the worst global energy crisis in decades.
Alaeddin Boroujerdi, a senior member of Iran’s parliament, told state television on Sunday that any vessel passing through the strategic waterway was paying a $2mn fee.
“A new regime is being implemented in the waterway,” he said.
Lloyd’s List Intelligence reported last week that a tanker operator had paid a $2mn fee in exchange for safe passage through the strait.
Admiral Bradley Cooper, the head of the US military’s Central Command, said on Saturday that Iran’s navy was “not sailing” and that “Iran’s combat capability is on a steady decline as our offensive strikes ramp up”.
US and Israeli officials have repeatedly said Iran’s missile capacity has been severely degraded.
But Neil Roberts, head of marine and aviation at the Lloyd’s Market Association, said the majority of ship masters and owners still felt the risk to crew and vessel safety was too high to transit the strait.
Vaez, Iran expert at the Crisis Group, said that even if the US decided to seize Iranian islands in a bid to open up the strait or destroyed civilian infrastructure, the regime would “retain the capacity to retaliate in a way that externalises the conflict to the global economy”.
“This goes back to the Iran-Iraq war [in the 1980s], there’s thousands of people standing in line to fight, and they are rooted in contingency plans refined over decades,” he said.
“When it comes to the Strait, these are less ad hoc reactions than longstanding playbooks Tehran has kept on the shelf for roughly 40 years.”
Majid Mousavi, head of aerospace for Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, said over the weekend that the country’s “new tactics and launch systems” would greatly shock the US and Israel.
Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, chief executive of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation think-tank, said if the US and Israel did hit Iran’s power plants, of which there are hundreds, and cause serious damage, it “would constrain Iranian economic output for years to come”.
“But I don’t see how it impinges on Iran’s missile and drone attacks in the short term,” Batmanghelidj said.
“In the medium term, there might be an impact on defence production, but Iran still has time to work through its stocks.”
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