Trump again threatens to strike Iran’s power plants amid impasse over strait of Hormuz

US President Donald Trump has renewed his threats against Iran's energy infrastructure, warning that the United States could strike power plants and bridges inside Iran next week unless Tehran returns to the negotiating table. The warning came during a Fox News interview on Tuesday and arrives amid a rapidly escalating military confrontation between the United States and Iran that has been unfolding over several days. The threatened strikes would target civilian supply infrastructure, extending the potential impact of the conflict beyond military targets to the general Iranian population. The statement is significant because it marks a further escalation in an already multi-day exchange of strikes across the Gulf region, one that directly affects international shipping, energy markets, and the security of several Gulf states.

According to multiple consistent reports, Trump said that next week would get "really bad" for Iran because "the power plants" and "the bridges" would be targeted. He tied this threat explicitly to a condition: Tehran would need to agree to negotiate in order to avoid such strikes. At the same time, he indicated that strikes would continue "tonight," "tomorrow night," "the night after," and into the following week if there was no movement toward a deal. This phrasing suggests an ongoing campaign rather than a single planned strike.

The backdrop to this threat is an already active military conflict that has intensified significantly in recent days. Reports indicate that the US military carried out a fourth consecutive night of strikes against targets inside Iran on Tuesday. US Central Command stated that the strikes were intended to continue degrading Iranian capabilities previously used to attack commercial shipping. At the same time, the United States reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports, reportedly set to take effect at 2000 GMT (1600 Eastern Time), a measure designed to prevent ships from sailing to or from Iran and, according to US officials, to cut off oil revenue funding the Iranian government.

The latest escalation appears to have been triggered by Iranian attacks on several Gulf states. Reports describe Iranian missile and drone strikes on a US naval support facility in Bahrain, accompanied by air-raid sirens in the Bahraini capital. Other reports describe additional Iranian attacks on Kuwait, as well as strikes on tankers owned by the United Arab Emirates in the Strait of Hormuz. As a result, the conflict has expanded from a bilateral US-Iran confrontation into a broader crisis directly affecting multiple Gulf states.

A key point of contention in recent days involved a proposed 20 percent fee on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which Trump initially floated before dropping it a day later following sharp criticism. In its place, he said he would instead pursue investment agreements with Gulf states. This policy shift occurred around the same time as the reimposition of the naval blockade and the renewed strike threats, suggesting that the US administration is recalibrating its combination of economic and military pressure on Tehran.

On the Iranian side, the deputy foreign minister reportedly accused the United States of destroying a previously existing interim peace arrangement, stating that Tehran no longer considers itself bound by commitments under a related memorandum of understanding. This suggests that some form of negotiating framework or truce arrangement had existed prior to the latest escalation, though its precise status cannot be fully clarified from the available reporting. Accounts also differ somewhat on whether the current situation represents a full return to open war or a severe but still bounded escalation.

Several questions remain unresolved based on current reporting. It is unclear whether the threatened strikes on power plants and bridges will actually be carried out next week, what scale they might take, and how Iran would respond to potential destruction of civilian infrastructure. It is also unclear whether and when renewed negotiations between the two sides might resume, and what role the affected Gulf states — particularly Bahrain and Kuwait, which were directly struck — will play going forward, whether as mediators or as further targets.

The broader implications of these developments are considerable. An expansion of strikes to energy infrastructure could severely worsen conditions for Iran's civilian population and further heighten tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, a corridor central to global oil transport. The simultaneous continuation of the naval blockade and military strikes suggests that the United States intends to maintain pressure on multiple fronts — military, economic, and diplomatic — simultaneously, even as a durable negotiated resolution does not currently appear within reach.