Trump Warns Iran's Power Plants and Bridges Face Destruction

President Trump threatened to destroy Iran's power plants and bridges unless Tehran accepts a deal reopening the Strait of Hormuz by his deadline.

News On AIR reports that US President Donald Trump has warned Iran's power plants and bridges will be destroyed if the country does not meet his latest deadline to agree to a deal that includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The warning escalated sharply: he threatened that "the whole civilisation will die tonight" if Tehran does not allow traffic to fully resume in the strait, through which a fifth of the world's oil transits in peacetime. The ultimatum came as strikes were already landing on Iranian infrastructure.

According to News On AIR, the threat followed airstrikes that hit two bridges and a train station in Iran, while Iranian officials urged young people to form human chains to protect power plants. Khorramabad International Airport in the western province of Lorestan also came under US-Israeli airstrikes. Israel has increasingly carried out strikes it says aim to deliver a blow to Iran's economy, and Iran meanwhile fired on Israel and Saudi Arabia, prompting the temporary closure of a major bridge.

Officials involved in diplomatic efforts said talks were ongoing, but Iran has rejected the latest American proposal, per News On AIR. US Vice President JD Vance, speaking at a press conference in Budapest, Hungary, said negotiations were on with Iran but "the ball is in the Iranians' court now," adding that the US has largely achieved its military objectives in the West Asia conflict. On the Iranian side, President Masoud Pezeshkian said 14 million people, including himself, have volunteered to fight — a figure that appears in News On AIR's reporting.

The immediate stakes are oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, already strained after a supertanker struck naval mines there, and the risk that strikes on power plants and bridges deepen a war whose own Pentagon brass have privately called unsustainable. Tehran's rejection of the US proposal and Washington's shrinking deadline leave little room for de-escalation before any expiry. Elsewhere, Reuters reported via Devdiscourse that Kosovo's ruling and opposition parties agreed to back law professor Bekim Sejdiu for president, a deal that could break nearly two years of political deadlock in the EU-aspiring country.