Trump Warns Iran He Could Strike ‘Every Power Plant,’ in WSJ Interview

WASHINGTON—President Trump threatened to destroy all of Iran’s power plants if the country’s leaders don’t agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by Tuesday evening, ratcheting up pressure on Tehran.

“If they don’t come through, if they want to keep it closed, they’re going to lose every power plant and every other plant they have in the whole country,” Trump said in an eight-minute interview with The Wall Street Journal on Sunday. 

The comments came hours after U.S. forces rescued an American aviator trapped in Iran. Trump in recent days has repeatedly escalated his threats against the country, which has resisted his demands and appears determined to carry out a war of attrition.

An administration official said the events of the weekend have animated the president and made him eager to apply even more pressure on the Iranians as he seeks a deal. Trump warned during his address last week that he planned to hit Iran hard over the next two to three weeks. Now entering its sixth week, the conflict was initially forecast to last four to six weeks by the Trump administration.  

In response to Trump’s threats, Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on social media that the only viable path was to step back from further escalation. “Your reckless moves are dragging the United States into a living hell for every single family, and our whole region is going to burn,” he said.

Behind the scenes negotiations to reach a cease-fire hit a dead end on Friday, mediators said, but back channel efforts continued over the weekend between mediators from regional countries and special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. 

Monday marks the end of a 10-day deadline Trump gave Iran last month to make a deal and open the Strait of Hormuz. The deadlines themselves have been a moving target. In the interview, Trump moved it to Tuesday, and on Sunday afternoon, without elaboration, Trump posted “Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time!”

Pressed on when he thinks the war will end, Trump said in the interview: “I will let you know pretty soon,” adding that he believed Iran would already take 20 years to rebuild from the damage of the war.

“If they don’t do something by Tuesday evening, they won’t have any power plants and they won’t have any bridges standing,” he said.

In a social-media post on Sunday morning, Trump threatened to destroy Iran’s power plants and bridges on Tuesday if the Strait of Hormuz isn’t reopened. But the post offered few details about how expansive the attacks might be.

Asked if he is concerned that the people of Iran, a country of 93 million people, could suffer if civilian infrastructure is hit, Trump said, “No, they want us to do it,” arguing that Iranian people are “living in hell.”

Trump said the Iranian people are scared to protest in public and risk being killed. “The only reason they’re not on the street is they’ve killed 45,000 people. When they go in the street, they get shot,” Trump said.

In recent weeks, Tehran has been mobilizing its population in ways that seek to harness the spirit of its 1980s war with Iraq, including drives to recruit millions of Iranians.

In the interview, the president also shared new details about the dramatic rescue of two U.S. airmen whose F-15E was shot down over Iran. Trump said the Friday rescue of the first airman was kept quiet so a search could continue for the second pilot, who was wounded but climbed up to a mountain crevice where he was rescued.

The Central Intelligence Agency carried out a deception operation to help protect the U.S. airman, the Journal has reported, spreading word within Iran that American forces had already located him and were preparing to fly him out of the country.

“We didn’t play up the first one, because then they would have found out about the second one,” Trump said. “You know, normally this is not done. When airmen go down, you can’t get them in very tough countries.”

The two pilots were in the same plane but landed a long distance apart because of the speed at which the jet was flying when the airmen evacuated, Trump said.

“Even though they’re only separated by five or six seconds, five or six seconds when you’re going 1,000 miles an hour, so that’s many miles, right?” he said.

“They were out there looking for him, the soldiers were all over the place looking for him because they knew he was somewhere. A lot of great things happened.”

In the interview, Trump declined to answer whether the U.S. believed Iran used Chinese or Russian air defense capabilities to shoot down the American plane. “Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t,” he said.

On Monday afternoon, Trump is expected to hold a news conference on Iran with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other military officials. He will also be meeting later this week with North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Mark Rutte. 

Trans-Atlantic ties between the U.S. and Europe have been deteriorating rapidly, as European leaders have come out staunchly against a war they see as both illegal and ill-advised. Trump has told aides his experience with the Iran war has left him with a much more negative feeling about Europeans than when he went into the war. He has mused about pulling out of the 77-year-old NATO alliance, but couldn’t actually do so without Congressional approval.

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