“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, before directing a profane instruction at Iranian leadership to open the waterway or face devastation. The post ended with the words “Praise be to Allah” — a closing that carried its own particular contempt.
The threat lands against a backdrop of strikes that have already hit bridges, hospitals, universities and pharmaceutical facilities across Iran over five weeks of war. The B1 bridge connecting Tehran to Karaj — the country’s largest — was severed last week, with Trump posting images of the wreckage on social media. Experts have warned that some of the existing strikes may constitute war crimes under the Geneva Conventions. Sunday’s threat was not a signal of intent to cross into new territory so much as an announcement that the existing trajectory would accelerate on a named day.
Asked by the Wall Street Journal whether he was concerned about the impact on Iranian civilians of targeting power plants and bridges, Trump said he was not. “No, they want us to do it,” he said. “They’re living in hell.” The answer disposed of the humanitarian question in two sentences and moved on.
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Iran’s mission to the United Nations responded with language calibrated for the international legal record. “Once again, the US president openly threatens to destroy infrastructure essential to civilian survival in Iran,” the mission said. “The international community and all states have legal obligations to prevent such atrocious acts of war crimes. They must act now. Tomorrow is too late.” The statement was addressed to the international community in terms that acknowledged what that community has so far failed to produce: any mechanism capable of constraining the campaign.
Tehran’s position on the strait hardened simultaneously. Seyyed Mehdi Tabatabaei, deputy for communications at the Iranian president’s office, said the waterway would not reopen without reparations for war damages — and that those payments would come through transit fees under what he described as a “new legal regime” around the strait. The formulation is consistent with Iran’s earlier suggestions of a tolling system, and it directly contradicts the American demand for free and unrestricted passage as a precondition for ending the campaign. Tabatabaei dismissed Trump’s post as evidence that Washington had “resorted to obscenities and nonsense out of sheer desperation and anger.”
Trump told Fox News on Sunday that Iran was actively negotiating and that a deal could be reached before his deadline. Iranian officials have consistently denied that formal negotiations are underway, describing the exchanges as message-passing rather than talks. The gap between the two characterisations of the same back-channel contacts has been a defining feature of the war’s diplomatic dimension since the fighting began.
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In a separate post, Trump confirmed the rescue of the F-15E crew member shot down over Iran on Friday — the loss of the aircraft having already punctured weeks of official American claims that Iran’s air defences had been completely eliminated. “We have rescued the seriously wounded, and really brave, F-15 Crew Member/Officer, from deep inside the mountains of Iran,” he wrote. “An AMAZING show of bravery and talent by all.” The rescue was genuine. The context — a crew member seriously wounded after being shot down by a country whose air defences the Pentagon had declared non-existent — was left unaddressed.
Trump has scheduled a White House news conference for Monday. Tuesday, by his own announcement, has been designated for something else.