Trump renews threat to Iran's energy, oil sites despite 'great progress' in talks
US President Trump's latest threat came as Iran's Foreign Ministry slammed the US administration's "excessive, unrealistic and unreasonable" demands.
WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump touted "great progress" in talks with Iran on Monday, while doubling down on his threat to bomb the country's civilian infrastructure if no deal is reached.
In a Truth Social post shortly before markets opened, Trump stated that while no agreement has been made to quickly reopen the Strait of Hormuz, “we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched.’”
Over the past week, Trump’s rhetoric has oscillated between optimism about a peace deal and warnings of further military action. In an interview on Sunday, Trump said the United States might seize Iran’s Kharg Island, its primary oil terminal in the Persian Gulf.
“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” Trump told the Financial Times. “It would also mean we had to be there [in Kharg Island] for a while.”
The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the Trump administration is considering deploying combat troops to seize Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium, which the UN's nuclear agency believes are stored in a tunnel complex at Isfahan and the Natanz facility. Both nuclear sites were targeted by US strikes during Operation Midnight Hammer last June.
The United States and Iran have been communicating indirectly through mediators including Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt. However, the positions of the two sides remain far apart. Last Thursday, Trump announced he would delay his threat to attack Iran's energy infrastructure again, pushing the deadline to April 6 while talks continue.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, said on Monday that the 15-point plan proposed by the United States last week includes “excessive, unrealistic and unreasonable demands.” In response, Tehran has called for guarantees against future US attacks, compensation for strike-related damage and recognition of its right to control traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.
On Sunday, Pakistan hosted the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey in Islamabad for talks on ending the month-long war. Officials from Israel, Iran and the United States were absent from the discussions, and no announcements were made.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said Sunday that the United States had achieved “regime change” in Iran due to the number of its leaders who have been killed. In Monday’s Truth Social post, Trump said Washington was dealing with “A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME” in Tehran.
However, analysts say the elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei to supreme leader — a hard-liner close to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — signals a hardening of Iran’s stance toward the West. The Trump administration has reportedly looked to work with parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, an IRGC veteran who is considered a pragmatic hard-liner inside Iran.
Asked about Trump’s claim of “more reasonable” Iranian leadership, Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday declined to say who the United States was in contact with “because it probably would get them in trouble” internally.
“At the end of the day, we have to see if these people end up being the ones in charge, seeing if they’re the ones that have the power to deliver,” Rubio said.
This story has been updated since initial publication.
