Trump doubles down on Tuesday night deadline for Iran to meet US demands
President Trump on Monday doubled down on his deadline for Iran to make a deal with the United States by Tuesday evening, or else face destroyed infrastructure.
“We’re giving them until tomorrow at 8 o’clock. And after that, they’re going to have no bridges, no power plants,” Trump told reporters at a White House news conference, saying again that Iran would be sent back to the “stone ages.”
Trump began the briefing by warning that Iran “could be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night.”
He originally set the 8 p.m. deadline on his social media platform Truth Social on Sunday, after he threatened to strike Iran’s power plants and bridges if the country did not open the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil shipping lane. The Tuesday deadline was an extension of a warning he issued on March 26.
The closure of the strait has destabilized oil supplies and sent prices skyrocketing since the war began more than five weeks ago. Iran has only let a few ships through for a fee and, Trump has said, as a gift to the U.S. to show they were serious about negotiations.
The president’s remarks come after the U.S. and Iran received a ceasefire proposal from Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey that included a 45-day ceasefire and the Strait of Hormuz opening. Trump told reporters earlier Monday that Iran made a “significant” offer, but that it wasn’t “good enough.”
“They made a proposal, and it’s a significant proposal. It’s a significant step. It’s not good enough, but it’s a very significant step,” he said. “They have made, and they’re negotiating now, and they’ve made a very significant step. We’ll see what happens.”
But he told reporters Iran is negotiating. “We think in good faith, we’re going to find out,” he said, later calling Iran an “active, willing participant.”
“They would like to be able to make a deal,” he said. “I can’t say any more than that.”
The president said there is a contingency plan in place if Iran does not come to the U.S. with an agreement.
“We have a plan because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again,” he said.
“It’ll happen over a period of four hours, if we wanted to,” he said. “We don’t want that to happen.”
“Do I want to destroy their infrastructure? No,” Trump added. “It will take them 100 years to rebuild right now. If we left today, it would take them 20 years to rebuild their country, and it would never be as good as it was. And the only way they’re going to be able to rebuild their country is to utilize the genius of the United States of America.”
When asked if he was concerned that such attacks would amount to war crimes, he said, “not at all.” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned the U.S. that international law bans attacking civilian infrastructure, his spokesperson said Monday, according to The Associated Press.
The president said the U.S. “may even get involved with helping them rebuild their nation.”
“And you know what? If that’s the case, the last thing we want to do is start with power plants, which are among the most expensive things, and bridges,” he said.
He said opening the Strait of Hormuz is a “very big priority” and said earlier Monday that he would prefer to “take the oil,” but the American public wouldn’t agree to it.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in a post on the social platform X on Sunday that Trump’s threats against Iran would be war crimes if carried out.
“Trump is calling reporters today to tell them he is going to commit mass war crimes next week,” Murphy wrote on X. “GOP leaders need to stop him. Never mind that blowing up bridges and power plants and killing innocent Iranians won’t reopen the Strait. It’s also a clear war crime.”
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has emerged as a staunch Republican critic of Trump’s, knocked the president for potentially targeting innocent Iranian civilians in her own post on X.
“The Strait is closed because the US and Israel started the unprovoked war against Iran based on the same nuclear lies they’ve been telling for decades, that any moment Iran would develop a nuclear weapon,” Greene said.
“You know who has nuclear weapons? Israel. They are more than capable of defending themselves without the US having to fight their wars, kill innocent people and children, and pay for it. Trump threatening to bomb power plants and bridges hurts the Iranian people, the very people Trump claimed he was freeing.”
Trump and his administration have grappled with steeply rising oil prices as a result of the war, along with growing dissatisfaction over U.S. involvement among Americans in general and in Congress.
Still, the president has maintained that the moves made in Iran are for the futures of Americans and Iranians, and that he has achieved the goal of not allowing Iran to build a nuclear weapon.
He told reporters that Iranian citizens want the U.S. to keep bombing, even at the expense of their infrastructure, and that they “would be willing to suffer that in order to have freedom.”
“When we leave, and we’re not hitting those areas, they’re saying, ‘Please come back. Come back, come back,'” he said.
“All I can tell you is they want freedom,” he said.
The developments come after the U.S. carried out an ambitious search-and-rescue mission for a missing service member whose plane was shot down in Iran on Friday. The move by Iran marked the regime’s most aggressive one to date in the war.
Trump celebrated the successful rescue mission at the briefing alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, calling the operation “a breathtaking show of skill, precision, lethality, and force.”
Updated at 4:43 p.m. EDT
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