US President Donald Trump has warned that a “whole civilization will die tonight” but said Iran still has time to capitulate ahead of a deadline set for 8pm in Washington.
The American leader issued the stark threat on Tuesday, about 12 hours ahead of his deadline for Iran to agree to a deal that includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz or face punishing strikes.
Mr Trump wrote on his social media site: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
He added: “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”
Mr Trump’s statement nonetheless kept the possibility of an off-ramp open, saying that “maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen”.
Meanwhile, airstrikes pounded Tehran on Tuesday, and Iranian officials urged young people to form human chains to protect power plants.
Mr Trump has extended previous deadlines but suggested this latest one was final, and the rhetoric on both sides reached a fever pitch, leaving Iranians on edge.
Mr Trump has 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 US 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 Mr 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 Mr Trump’s threatened attacks.
World leaders and experts warned that strikes as destructive as Mr 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.
In emphasizing his Tuesday deadline, Mr 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 on 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,” Mr Pezeshkian wrote.
Meanwhile, the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard warned that Iran would “deprive the US and its allies of the region’s oil and gas for years” and expand its attacks across the Gulf region if Mr Trump carried 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.
