Iran Commits to Targeting Key Middle East Infrastructure in Response to Trump’s Strait of Hormuz Remarks

On Sunday, Iran issued a stark warning, threatening to target critical infrastructure throughout the Middle East if U.S. President Donald Trump proceeds with his threat to destroy the Islamic Republic’s power facilities unless the Strait of Hormuz is promptly reopened.

President Trump, who has hinted at the possibility of scaling back military engagements in the region, has intensified his stance against Iran. He announced a deadline for Iran to lift its effective blockade of this vital trade passage.

“If Iran does not FULLY OPEN the Strait of Hormuz, WITHOUT THREATS, within 48 HOURS of this announcement, the United States of America will commence obliterating their POWER PLANTS, BEGINNING WITH THE LARGEST!” Trump declared on his Truth Social platform.

In response, Iran’s military command warned that any attack on its facilities would be met with strikes on U.S. energy, IT, and desalination infrastructure in the region.

This defiant stance from Iran follows its retaliation to an assault on its Natanz nuclear facility by launching two direct strikes on southern Israel.

Slipping past the country’s air defences, the missiles crashed into the towns of Dimona, which hosts a nuclear facility, and Arad, wounding more than 100 people.

Israel said it launched a fresh wave of strikes on Iranian capital Tehran on Sunday in response.

But Trump turned his attention to the blockaded strait, which typically carries a fifth of the global crude oil trade.

The standoff has rattled markets and sent oil prices soaring, with North Sea Brent crude now trading above US$105 ($149.37) a barrel, as concerns grow about the long-term consequences for the global economy.

The hit to supplies from the Gulf has caused fuel prices to spike worldwide, threatening governments with widespread inflation the longer the war continues.

As thousands more American Marines head to the Middle East, US Central Command said bunker-busting bombs were dropped on an underground Iranian coastal facility this week, degrading Iran’s ability to threaten freedom of navigation in the strategic waterway.

Meanwhile, Trump has slammed North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies as “cowards” and urged them to secure the strait.

A total of 22 countries — including the UK, France, Italy, Germany, South Korea, Australia, the UAE and Bahrain — condemned on Saturday the “de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces”.

‘This was terrifying’

Iran’s missile attack on Israel indicated that its arsenal still poses a threat across the region, even after Trump and Netanyahu claimed to have decimated the Iranian regime’s forces.

The Iranian hits on the towns of Arad and Dimona tore open the fronts of residential buildings and carved craters into the ground — among the most destructive attacks of the three-week war.

AFP footage from Arad showed rescue workers sifting through rubble for wounded people in a bombed-out building.

“There was a ‘boom, boom!’, my mother was screaming,” 17-year-old Arad resident Ido Franky told AFP near the impact site, where an AFP correspondent saw three damaged buildings and firefighters reported a blaze.

“This was terrifying … this town had never seen anything like this.”

Dimona hosts what is widely believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal, although Israel has never admitted to possessing nuclear weapons, insisting the site is for research.

The missile fell about five kilometres from the nuclear facility, leaving about 30 people wounded, according to rescuers.

United Nations nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi reiterated his call for “military restraint to avoid any risk of a nuclear accident.”

Meanwhile, Iran has kept up retaliatory attacks on Gulf nations it accuses of serving as a launchpad for US strikes.

Saudi Arabia said Sunday it detected three ballistic missiles around its capital city of Riyadh and the kingdom’s forces intercepted three drones.

The United Arab Emirates said it responded to new missile and drone attacks from Iran, after the Islamic Republic warned its neighbour against allowing strikes from disputed islands near the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran also launched an unsuccessful ballistic-missile attack on the US-UK base at Diego Garcia, around 4,000 kilometres away, a UK official told AFP — which would have been the longest-range Iranian strike yet had it succeeded.

Iran has not claimed responsibility for this attack.

‘Resilience that we didn’t perhaps expect’

Analysts say Iran’s government has survived the loss of its top leaders and that its strike capacity is proving more durable than expected.

“They’re showing a lot of resilience that we didn’t perhaps expect, that the US didn’t expect, when it took this on,” Neil Quilliam of Chatham House told the think tank’s podcast.

Tehran, meanwhile, marked the end of Ramadan and the Persian New Year, Nowruz, as the war entered its fourth week.

Iran’s supreme leader traditionally leads Eid al-Fitr prayers, but Mojtaba Khamenei — who came to power earlier this month after his father Ali Khamenei was killed — has remained out of the public eye.

Instead, the head of the judiciary, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei, attended prayers at central Tehran’s overflowing Imam Khomeini grand mosque.

“The atmosphere of the New Year was spreading through the city,” said Farid, an advertising executive reached by AFP through an online message.

But “the thought that some people could be dying right at the New Year dinner table was painful,” he added.

For the latest from SBS News, download our app and subscribe to our newsletter.