Trump issues 48-hour Hormuz Strait ultimatum, threatens Iran power plants

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United States President Donald Trump has threatened to attack Iran’s power plants if freedom of navigation is not fully restored at the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, a dramatic escalation as the US-Israeli war on Iran continues for a fourth week.

The statement on Saturday came as Trump faces increasing pressure to secure the vital waterway that Iran has promised to keep closed to “enemy ships”, leading to soaring oil prices and plunging stock markets.

“If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST,” Trump, who is in his Florida home for the weekend, wrote on Truth Social at 23:44 GMT.

He did not specify which plant he was referring to as the biggest.

Following Trump’s threat, the Iranian army said it would target all energy infrastructure belonging to the US in the region if Iran’s fuel and energy infrastructure were attacked.

Trump’s escalatory comments came barely a day after he talked about “winding down” the war that he launched alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on February 28, when the US and Iran were engaged in nuclear negotiations.

In a social media post on Friday, Trump said the US was “getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East”.

Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world’s oil and gas passes through during peacetime, has virtually ground to a halt since the early days of the war.

Iran has said the Strait of Hormuz is open to all except the US and its allies, with Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi saying last week that he had been “approached by a number of countries” seeking safe passage for their vessels.

“This is up to our military to decide,” he told the US television network CBS, adding that a group of ships from “different countries” had been allowed to pass, without providing details.

The head of US Central Command, Admiral Brad Cooper, asserted on Saturday that Iran’s ability to attack 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 mobile launchers earlier this week.

The strike also destroyed “intelligence support sites and missile radar relays” used to monitor ship movements, Cooper said.

Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Manuel Rapalo said there seemed to be a “gap between what the White House appears to want in the Strait of Hormuz and what the US military says they have already accomplished”.

“It is interesting, to say at the very least, to hear Trump talking about a major escalation, given the fact that we’ve been hearing throughout the course of the day how much damage the US has done, supposedly, to Iran’s ability to target oil tankers and vessels navigating through the strait.”