US President Donald Trump threatened overnight that a "whole civilization will die tonight" if Iran fails to meet his latest deadline to strike a deal that includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz, while the Islamic Republic urged young people to form human chains around power plants and other potential targets.
An Iranian envoy said Tehran would "take immediate and proportionate" action if Trump follows through on his threats. Tehran’s United Nations representative, Amir-Saeid Iravani, said the president's threats “constitute incitement to war crimes and potentially genocide."
Even before the deadline, airstrikes hit two bridges and a train station, and the US hit military infrastructure on Kharg Island. It was the second time American forces struck the island, a key hub for Iranian oil production.
Since the war began, Trump has repeatedly imposed deadlines linked to threats, only to extend them. But the president insisted this one is final and will expire at 8pm (local time) in Washington without a major diplomatic breakthrough.
He has also offered contradictory statements about what might actually happen.
Trump has made reopening the strait— through which a fifth of the world’s oil transits in peacetime — part of avoiding wider attacks and suggested that the waterway is not as vital to US oil interests as it to other countries. He has also said he would be willing to deploy ground troops to seize Iranian oil, while maintaining that major combat operations in that country could soon conclude.
The US President said on social media that Iran has just hours to make a deal or face the fiercest and most aggressive attacks yet. (Source: Breakfast)
That means the next moves by the US are largely a mystery, even as rhetoric on both sides has reached a fever pitch.
Meanwhile, Iran's president said 14 million people, including himself, have volunteered to fight. That's despite Trump threatening that US forces could wipe out all bridges in Iran in a matter of hours and reduce all power plants to smoking rubble in roughly the same time frame. He also suggested the entire country could be wiped off the map.
New strikes may not have been linked to Trump's larger threats
It was not clear if the latest airstrikes were linked to Trump’s threats to widen the civilian target list. At least two of the targets were connected to Iran’s rail network, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli warplanes struck bridges and railways in Iran.
Tehran fired on Israel and Saudi Arabia, prompting the temporary closure of a major bridge.
While Iran cannot match the sophistication of US and Israeli weaponry or their dominance in the air, its chokehold on the strait is roiling the world economy and raising the pressure on Trump both at home and abroad to find a way out of the standoff.
Officials involved in diplomatic efforts said talks were ongoing, but Iran has rejected the latest American proposal.
Trump has shrugged off concerns about war crime accusations
"A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again," if a deal isn’t reached, Trump said in an online post Tuesday morning. But he also seemed to keep open the possibility of an off-ramp, saying that "maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen".
However, Iran says US strikes are killing civilians, as the American president faces mounting scrutiny over whether targeting civilian infrastructure violates international law. (Source: 1News)
Earlier, 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.
Iranians have formed human chains in the past around nuclear sites at times of heightened tensions with the West. Some images of people surrounding power plants were posted Tuesday by local Iranian media, though how widespread the practice was is unknown.
President Masoud Pezeshkian posted on X that 14 million Iranians had answered campaigns urging people to volunteer to fight — and said he would join them — while a Revolutionary Guard general urged parents to send their children to man checkpoints.
The Guard warned that Iran would "deprive the US and its allies of the region’s oil and gas for years" and expand its attacks across the Gulf region if Trump carries out his threat.
In Tehran, the mood was bleak. A young teacher said that many opponents of Iran's Islamic system had hoped Trump's attacks would quickly topple it.
As the war drags on, she fears US and Israeli strikes will 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, as Trump said,” she told The Associated Press, speaking on the condition of anonymity for her safety.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot joined a growing chorus of international voices saying that attacks targeting civilian and energy infrastructure could constitute a war crime.
Such cases are notoriously difficult to prosecute, though, and Trump says he’s "not at all" concerned about committing war crimes.
Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said he deplored the rhetoric being used over the last two weeks "by all parties, including the latest threats to annihilate a whole civilization and to target civilian infrastructure".
Airstrikes hit Iran, which fires on Saudi Arabia and Israel
Intense airstrikes pounded Tehran, including in residential neighborhoods. In the past, such strikes have targeted Iranian government and security officials.
The Israeli military said it attacked an Iranian petrochemical site in Shiraz, the second day in a row it hit such a facility. The military later said it also struck bridges in Tehran, Karaj, Tabriz, Kashan and Qom that were being used by Iranian forces to transport weapons and military equipment.
A US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations, described the strikes on Kharg Island as hitting targets previously struck and not directed at oil infrastructure.
Earlier in the war, American forces hit air defences, a radar site, an airport and a hovercraft base there, according to satellite analysis by the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project.
Saudi Arabia said it intercepted seven ballistic missiles and four drones launched by Iran.
Saudi Arabia temporarily closed the King Fahd Causeway, the only road connection between Bahrain, home to the US Navy's 5th Fleet, and the Arabian Peninsula. Iran also fired on Israel.
More than 1900 people have been killed in Iran since the war began, but the government has not updated the toll for days.
In Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants, more than 1500 people have been killed. and more than 1 million people have been displaced. Eleven Israeli soldiers have died there.
In Gulf Arab states and the occupied West Bank, more than two dozen people have died, while 23 have been reported dead in Israel, and 13 US service members have been killed.
Overnight the US President Donald Trump threatened that a "whole civilization will die tonight" if Iran fails to meet his latest deadline to strike a deal. (Source: Breakfast)
Chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz
Iran effectively blocked shipping through the strait after Israel and the US attacked in February. That, and Iran’s attacks on the energy infrastructure of its Gulf Arab neighbours, have sent oil prices skyrocketing, raising the price of gasoline, food and other basics far beyond the Middle East.
Tehran has rejected a 45-day ceasefire proposal, saying it wants a permanent end to the war. But as Trump's deadline neared, an official said indirect communications between the United States and Iran remained underway. Mediators from Pakistan, Egypt and Türkiye "are racing against time" to reach a compromise before the deadline, the official said.
He said Iran has linked the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to sanctions relief, and the US was open to easing some sanctions, especially on Iran's oil sector, in part to stabilise the global oil market.
The morning's headlines in 90 seconds, including a complaint upheld against Richard Chambers, new photos from the moon mission, and JD Vance’s awkward phone call. (Source: 1News)
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