By Parisa Hafezi and Trevor Hunnicutt
Dubai/Washington — Iran showed no sign of accepting Donald Trump’s ultimatum to open the Strait of Hormuz by the end of Tuesday, while the US president threatened that “a whole civilisation will die tonight” unless Tehran reached a last-minute deal.
Trump has given Iran until 8pm in Washington — 3.30am on Wednesday in Tehran — to end its blockade of Gulf oil, or he will destroy every bridge and power plant in Iran. Iran says it would retaliate against US allies in the Gulf, whose desert cities would be uninhabitable without power or water.
As the clock ticked down on Trump’s deadline, strikes on Iran intensified throughout the day, hitting railway and road bridges, an airport and a petrochemical plant. US forces attacked targets on Kharg Island, home to Iran’s main oil export terminal, which Trump has openly mused about seizing.
Iran responded by declaring it would no longer hold back from hitting its Gulf neighbours’ infrastructure, and it claimed to have carried out fresh strikes on a ship in the Gulf and on a huge Saudi petrochemical complex.
Genocide threat
“A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website.
“However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalised minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”
Brian Finucane, a former US state department legal adviser now with the International Crisis Group, said Trump’s remarks “could plausibly be interpreted as a threat to commit genocide” under US and international law.
A senior Iranian source said Tehran was maintaining its refusal to reopen the strait without US concessions that were not forthcoming so far.
If the US carried out Trump’s threat to hit Iran’s power grid, Tehran would plunge Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, into darkness, the source added, a threat that had been conveyed to Washington via Qatar.
Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called on Trump to extend his deadline for two weeks “to allow diplomacy to run its course”.
No ceasefire
Earlier, another senior Iranian source said Tehran had rejected a proposal conveyed by intermediaries for a temporary ceasefire.
Talks on a lasting peace could begin only after the US and Israel stop bombing, guarantee that they will not start again, and offer compensation for damage, the Iranian source said. Any settlement must leave Iran in control of the strait and impose fees for transit.
Despite the intensification of strikes and rhetoric from both sides, global markets were largely paralysed, hesitant to bet on whether Trump would follow through on his threats or call them off, as he has in the past.
A strike on transmission lines and a substation knocked out power in parts of Karaj west of Tehran. Israel warned Iranians in a Persian-language social media post that anyone near railways would be in danger.
The US military said on Tuesday it had carried out additional strikes on military targets on Iran’s Kharg Island, adding the strikes did not impact oil infrastructure.
A synagogue in Tehran was destroyed overnight by what Iran said were Israeli air strikes. Footage in Iranian media showed Hebrew texts scattered in the debris.
“The synagogue building was completely destroyed, and our Torah scrolls were left under the rubble,” said Homayoun Sameh, an MP representing Iran’s Jewish community, one of the Middle East’s biggest outside Israel. Israel’s military had no immediate comment.
‘Restraints removed’
Iran responded to an overnight attack on a major petrochemical site with a strike on Saudi Arabia’s huge downstream oil industry site at Jubail, where Western oil firms operate multibillion-dollar ventures. Verified video showed smoke and flames.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a statement that Tehran would “deprive America and its allies in the region of oil and gas for years”.
“Up to today we have shown great restraint for the sake of good neighbourliness and have had some consideration in choosing targets for retaliation,” it said. “But all these restraints have since been removed.”
Trump has abruptly called off similar threats over the past several weeks, citing what he has described as productive negotiations with figures in Iran he has never identified. Tehran has denied any such substantive talks have taken place.
Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan said “positive and productive endeavours” by Islamabad to mediate an end to the war were “approaching a critical, sensitive stage”.
A proposal conveyed by Pakistan called for a temporary ceasefire and the lifting of Iran’s effective blockade of the strait, while putting off a broader peace settlement for further talks, according to a source familiar with the plan.
But Iran’s 10-point response, as reported by the IRNA news agency on Monday, would require a permanent end to the war, the lifting of sanctions and a promise to rebuild Iranian sites damaged by the Israeli-US strikes.
It would also include a new mechanism to govern passage through the strait — previously an open international waterway through which a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas passed. Since the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, Iran has effectively closed it to most ships apart from its own.
Trump reiterated his deadline in a social media message on Sunday that declared, “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!”, language Iranian officials described as desperate or even mad.
• This article has been updated with new information.
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