Airstrikes pounded Tehran on Tuesday, and Iranian officials urged young people to form human chains to protect power plants, hours before the expiration of U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest deadline for the Islamic Republic to reopen the crucial Strait of Hormuz or face punishing strikes on its infrastructure.
Trump has extended previous deadlines but suggested the one set for 8 p.m. in Washington was final, and the rhetoric on both sides reached a fever pitch, leaving Iranians on edge. Trump threatened to destroy all of Iran’s power plants and bridges if Tehran does not allow traffic to fully resume in the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil transits in peacetime. Iran’s president said 14 million people, including himself, have volunteered to fight.
While Iran cannot match the sophistication of U.S. and Israeli weaponry or their dominance in the air, its chokehold on the strait is causing major damage to the world economy and raising the pressure on Trump both at home and abroad to find a way out of the standoff.
Officials involved in diplomatic efforts said talks were ongoing — but Iran has rejected the latest American proposal, and it was unclear if a deal would come in time to head off Trump’s threatened attacks. World leaders and experts warned that strikes as destructive as Trump threatened could constitute a war crime.
Meanwhile, a wave of strikes hit Iran, including in residential areas of Tehran, killing nearly three dozen people. Iran fired on Israel and Saudi Arabia, prompting the temporary closure of a major bridge.
As the deadline approaches, rhetoric ramps up
In emphasizing his Tuesday deadline, Trump warned that “the entire country can be taken out in one night.”
“Every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night,” he said Monday, and all power plants will be “burning, exploding and never to be used again.”
In response, Iran called on “all young people, athletes, artists, students and university students and their professors” to form human chains around power plants.
“Power plants that are our national assets and capital,” Alireza Rahimi, identified by Iranian state television as the secretary of the Supreme Council of Youth and Adolescents, said in a video statement.
Iranians have formed human chains in the past around nuclear sites at times of heightened tensions with the West. This time though, it was unclear who would heed the call, and one major power plant in Tehran apparently had been closed off for security purposes at the time the demonstration was to start.
President Masoud Pezeshkian posted on X that 14 million Iranians had answered state media and text message campaigns urging people to volunteer to fight.
“I too have been, am, and will remain ready to give my life for Iran,” Pezeshkian wrote.
The paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, meanwhile, warned that Iran would “deprive the U.S. and its allies of the region’s oil and gas for years” and expand its attacks across the Gulf region if Trump carries out his threat.
A general from the Guard also urged parents to send their children to man checkpoints, which have been repeatedly targeted in airstrikes.
In Tehran, the mood was bleak. One young man in a coffee shop spoke of how the situation was growing increasingly desperate and now the country faces the possibility of massive power cuts, if Trump follows through.
“I feel we are stuck between the blades of a pair of scissors,” said the man, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisals.
Trump’s threat prompts warnings of war crimes
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot joined a growing chorus of international voices calling for restraint, saying attacks targeting civilian and energy infrastructure “are barred by the rules of war, international law.”
“They would without doubt trigger a new phase of escalation, of reprisals, that would drag the region and the world economy into a vicious circle,” the minister said on France Info television.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres also warned the U.S. that attacks on civilian infrastructure are banned under international law, according to his spokesperson.
Such cases are notoriously difficult to prosecute, and Trump told reporters he’s “not at all” concerned about committing war crimes.
A wave of airstrikes hits Iran, which fires on Saudi Arabia and Israel
A series of intense airstrikes pounded Tehran, including in residential neighborhoods. Such strikes in the past have targeted Iranian government and security officials.
Israel’s military said it attacked an Iranian petrochemical site in Shiraz, the second day in a row it hit such a facility. Israel also issued a Farsi-language warning telling Iranians to avoid trains throughout the day, likely telegraphing intended strikes on the rail network.
Another strike hit the Khorramabad International Airport in western Iran, and an attack on an unidentified target in Alborz province, northwest of Tehran, killed 18 people, according to state media.
Nine people were killed in the city of Shahriar and six more in Pardis in other airstrikes, Iranian media reported.
Early Tuesday, Tehran launched seven ballistic missiles at Saudi Arabia, which authorities said rained debris near energy facilities as they were intercepted.
The attacks prompted Saudi Arabia to temporarily close the King Fahd Causeway, the only connection by road between Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, and the Arabian Peninsula.
Iran also fired on Israel, with reports of incoming missiles in Tel Aviv and Eilat.
More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran since the war began, but the government has not updated the toll for days.
In Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants, more than 1,400 people have been killed. and more than 1 million people have been displaced. Eleven Israeli soldiers have died there.
In Gulf Arab states and the occupied West Bank, more than two dozen people have died, while 23 have been reported dead in Israel, and 13 U.S. service members have been killed.
Chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz
Iran choked off shipping through the strait after Israel and the U.S. attacked on Feb. 28, starting the war. That stranglehold and Iran’s attacks on the energy infrastructure of its Gulf Arab neighbors have sent oil prices skyrocketing, raising the price of gasoline, food and other basics far beyond the Middle East.
In spot trading Tuesday, Brent crude, the international standard, was above $108 per barrel, up around 50% since the start of the war.
On Monday, Tehran rejected a 45-day ceasefire proposal and said it wants a permanent end to the war. But as Trump’s deadline neared Tuesday, an official said indirect communications between the United States and Iran remained underway. The official said mediators from Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey “are racing against time” to reach a compromise before the deadline.
He said Iran has linked the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to sanctions relief, and the U.S. was open to easing some sanctions, especially on Iran’s oil sector, in part to stabilize the global oil market.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing diplomacy.
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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Rising from Bangkok and Magdy from Cairo. John Leicester in Paris, Rod McGuirk in Melbourne, Australia, and Natalie Melzer in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
