Donald Trump has threatened to destroy an Iranian bridge or power plant every time Iran’s forces target a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, as the US president attempts to assert American control over the contested waterway.
In a social media post on Wednesday, Trump said that the potential targets included bridges and power plants in Tehran or close to the Iranian capital.
“From this point forward, any time the Islamic Republic of Iran shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, whether it be by Missile, Rocket, Drone, or any other device or weapon, the United States will bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT, including those located next to, or in, the Capital City of Tehran”, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Trump’s threat came after the 11th consecutive night of US strikes on the Islamic republic, as the two nations edged closer to a return to full-blown conflict.
The ratcheting-up in tit-for-tat strikes between the US and Iran has sent oil prices higher over the past month. Brent crude, the international benchmark, was up 3.4 per cent at $94.10 a barrel on Wednesday.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio told reporters in Manila on Wednesday that US strikes against Iran would continue until Tehran got “serious” about negotiations.
“The president always prefers to negotiate and reach a deal on these things, and we [are] willing to do that. We’ve tried to do that now for a year and a half, but we’re also not going to sit by and let ships be blown up or Americans be attacked,” Rubio said.
“We remain open to working it out in a negotiated way, but right now, they don’t seem to be serious about that, and so we’re going to continue to protect shipping,” Rubio added. “We are going to, when the opportunity presents itself, degrade their ability to target global shipping.”
Trump’s threat was the latest escalatory rhetoric from the US president against Tehran. He said on Tuesday that American forces would attack the heavily fortified Iranian nuclear facility deeply buried beneath Kolang Gazla — known as Pickaxe Mountain — in central Iran.
“We’ll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily,” he said during a meeting with Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun at the White House.
The US military has focused its strikes over the past 15 days on military and logistics targets that Iran could use to attack the strait, including missile and drone launch sites and coastal surveillance locations, including a surveillance tower at Chah Bahar Shahid Kalantari Port.
But the US has already targeted civilian infrastructure, striking several bridges, a tunnel, railway lines, an airport and maritime traffic control towers along Iran’s southern coastline, as well as in cities further inland, according to Iranian officials.
US strikes have also hit power transmission lines, water facilities and telecoms infrastructure.
Explosions were reported across several Iranian cities including Tabriz, Hendijan, Khormoj and Bushehr overnight, according to state media. Air defence systems were also activated in Tehran early on Wednesday.
Iran’s health ministry said on Wednesday that 53 people had been killed and nearly 600 injured in the latest flare-up of the conflict in the past few weeks.
Iranian armed forces have signalled they are prepared to escalate the conflict by targeting critical infrastructure across the region if the US strikes continue.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement on Wednesday that the US had hit a number of military and civilian targets overnight, despite the fact that no vessels had “dared” to cross through the “unauthorised” southern route of the strait, and “consequently, no explosions took place” — an apparent reference to the IRGC striking what they described as “violating” vessels in recent days.
In response, its forces targeted US military assets at the King Faisal and Prince Hassan air bases in Jordan, the statement added.
“The campaign to punish the aggressor will continue” in order to prevent the enemy from “repeating a cycle of war, negotiation and war,” it said.
Iran’s conventional army said it had also carried out drone strikes on military bases in Kuwait and Bahrain.
During testimony on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth said Washington had “been in control of moving traffic through [the strait] for quite some time”.
The US military reimposed a naval blockade of Iranian ports last week and by Tuesday had redirected eight vessels, according to US Central Command, which oversees Washington’s military operations in the Middle East. US forces have also struck and disabled one commercial ship.
Trump on Wednesday said that Iran would “pay a big price” for the deaths of four US troops killed during the conflict in recent days, as he left for Dover Air Force Base to receive the service members’ remains.
