Tehran responds to Trump’s menace by saying all US power infrastructure within the area might be focused if Iran is attacked.
Printed On 22 Mar 2026
United States President Donald Trump has threatened to assault Iran’s energy vegetation if freedom of navigation isn’t totally restored on the Strait of Hormuz inside 48 hours, a dramatic escalation because the US-Israeli conflict on Iran continues for a fourth week.
The assertion on Saturday got here as Trump faces rising strain to safe the very important waterway that Iran has promised to maintain closed to “enemy ships”, resulting in hovering oil costs 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 US 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 Fact 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 will 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 conflict 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 aims as we take into account winding down our nice Navy efforts within the Center East”.
Key waterway
Delivery site visitors by the Strait of Hormuz, the place a fifth of the world’s oil and fuel passes by throughout peacetime, has just about floor to a halt because the early days of the conflict.
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 various international locations” in search of protected passage for his or her vessels.
“That is as much as our army to determine,” he advised the US tv community CBS, including {that a} group of ships from “totally different international locations” had been allowed to move, with out offering particulars.
The pinnacle of US Central Command, Admiral Brad Cooper, asserted on Saturday that Iran’s skill 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 help 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 army says they’ve already achieved”.
“It’s fascinating, to say on the very least, to listen to Trump speaking a few main escalation, given the truth that we’ve been listening to all through the course of the day how a lot harm the US has accomplished, supposedly, to Iran’s skill to focus on oil tankers and vessels navigating by the strait.”
