Trump and Iran step up threats over energy targets as war escalates

TEL AVIV/JERUSALEM/WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump and Iran threatened to escalate their war by attacking energy facilities in the Gulf, in a potential widening of hostilities that could deepen a regional crisis and add to concerns in global markets.

Air raid sirens sounded across Israel from the early hours of March 22, warning of incoming missiles from Iran, after scores of people were hurt overnight in two separate attacks in the southern Israeli towns of Arad and Dimona.

The Israeli military said hours later that it was striking Tehran in response.

Mr Trump, on March 21, threatened to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if Tehran does not fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, a dramatic escalation that came barely a day after he talked about “winding down” the war, now in its fourth week.

Iran said on March 22 that it would attack US infrastructure, including energy facilities in the Gulf, and completely shut the strategic Strait of Hormuz if Mr Trump carried out his threat, which he made as US Marines and heavy landing craft continued to head to the region.

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on social media platform X that critical infrastructure and energy facilities in the Middle East could be “irreversibly destroyed” should Iranian power plants be attacked.

Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi said on March 22 that Iran’s critical water and energy infrastructure has suffered extensive damage from US and Israeli strikes on tens of thousands of civilian sites, according to ISNA news agency.

“The attacks targeted dozens of water transmission and treatment facilities and destroyed parts of critical water supply networks,” he noted, adding that efforts were under way to repair the damage.

Iran’s Red Crescent chief Pir Hossein Kolivand said the total number of damaged civilian sites “has reached 81,365 based on the latest field assessments”.

He said the figure includes residential and commercial units, schools, medical centres and vehicles.

More than 2,000 people have been killed during the war that the US and Israel launched on Feb 28, which has upended markets, spiked fuel costs, fuelled global inflation fears, and convulsed the post-war Western alliance.

Elevated uncertainty

Iranian attacks have effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that carries around a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, causing the worst oil crisis since the 1970s. Its near-closure sent European gas prices surging as much as 35 per cent last week.

Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya military command headquarters said on March 22 that if the US attacks Iran’s fuel and energy infrastructure, Iran would target all US energy, information technology and desalination infrastructure in the region.

IG market analyst Tony Sycamore said: “President Trump’s threat has now placed a 48-hour ticking time bomb of elevated uncertainty over markets. If the ultimatum is not walked back, we will likely see a Black Monday reopening of global equity markets in free fall and oil prices spiking significantly higher.”

Tehran would likely target Gulf energy facilities in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, which “would deepen and prolong the pain of higher energy prices and drag the conflict into a broader regional crisis”, Mr Sycamore said.

Oil prices jumped on March 20 and settled at their highest level in nearly four years, after Iraq declared force majeure on all oil fields developed by foreign firms, Israel attacked a major gas field in Iran, and Tehran responded with strikes on neighbours Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait.

The Strait of Hormuz remains open to all shipping, except vessels linked to “Iran’s enemies”, Iran’s representative to the UN maritime agency Ali Mousavi was quoted as saying in Iranian media reports published on March 22.

He made the comments while speaking last week to Chinese news agency Xinhua, before Mr Trump’s threat to attack Iranian power plants if the strait was not “fully open” within 48 hours.

Mr Mousavi said passage through the narrow waterway was possible by coordinating security and safety arrangements with Tehran.

Ship-tracking data has shown that some vessels, such as Indian-flagged ships and a Pakistani oil tanker, have managed to negotiate safe passage through the strait.

Pakistan has good ties with Iran while maintaining close relations with the US and Saudi Arabia.

Mr Trump’s idea in targeting Iranian infrastructure is to make the Hormuz blockade “economically and politically unbearable for Tehran, without destroying Iranian oil fields that would cause long-term global supply damage”, IG’s Mr Sycamore said.

The Islamic republic’s power grid is deeply intertwined with its energy sector.

Striking major plants could trigger blackouts, crippling everything from pumps and refineries to export terminals and military command centres.

While some Gulf desert states such as Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates have access to more than one sea to draw water from for desalination, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait are crowded along the shoreline of the Gulf, with no other coastline.

Iran expands firing range

Iranian forces, for the first time, fired long-range missiles on March 21, expanding the risk of attacks beyond the Middle East, while an Iranian strike landed near Israel’s secretive nuclear reactor, about 13km south-east of the city of Dimona.

Iran launched two 4,000km-range ballistic missiles at the US-British military base Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, said Israeli military chief Eyal Zamir.

The fighting in the Gulf has been taking place alongside a confrontation on a separate front between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, backed by Iran, with the Israeli military saying on March 22 that its troops had raided a number of the armed group’s sites in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah said it had attacked several border areas in northern Israel.

Israeli emergency services said one person was killed in an Israeli kibbutz near the border, the first fatality in Israel killed by fire from Lebanon since the escalation began.

Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets at Israel since it entered the regional war on March 2, prompting an Israeli offensive that has killed more than 1,000 people in Lebanon.

Israel said it had instructed the military to accelerate the demolition of Lebanese homes in “front-line villages” to end threats to Israeli communities, and to immediately destroy all bridges over Lebanon’s Litani River, which it said were being used for “terrorist activity”.

Pope Leo, on March 22, appealed for an end to the conflict.

“The death and suffering caused by this war are a scandal to the whole human family,” he said.

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted last week, found that 59 per cent of Americans disapprove of US military strikes against Iran, while 37 per cent approved of them.

The war has become a major political liability for Mr Trump ahead of the November midterm elections for Congress, with energy price shocks fuelling US inflation and hitting consumers and businesses hard. REUTERS