Iran’s ‘Civilization Will Die Tonight’ , Trump Threatens

The United States and Iran edged closer to a catastrophic escalation on Tuesday as President Donald Trump issued his most dire warning yet, threatening to destroy Iran’s power plants and bridges unless Tehran agrees to reopen the Strait of Hormuz before an 8 p.m. Washington deadline.

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump posted Tuesday morning, while leaving a narrow opening for diplomacy, adding that “maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen.”

Even before the deadline, airstrikes were already reshaping the battlefield. Explosions struck at least two bridges and a train station inside Iran on Tuesday, with Iranian officials confirming the hits. A separate strike targeted Khorramabad International Airport in western Iran.

U.S. forces also struck military targets on Kharg Island, Iran’s critical oil export hub, marking the second time the island has been targeted since hostilities began. Earlier strikes on the island had already taken out air defenses, a radar site, an airport facility, and a hovercraft base, according to satellite analysis.

Israel, operating alongside U.S. forces, struck a petrochemical facility in Shiraz for the second consecutive day.

The Israeli military also issued a Farsi-language public warning urging Iranians to avoid trains throughout the day, widely interpreted as a signal of planned strikes on Iran’s rail network.

The Islamic Republic launched retaliatory strikes on both Israel and Saudi Arabia, temporarily forcing the closure of a major bridge in the region.

Inside Iran, the government launched an aggressive mobilization campaign. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian announced on X that 14 million citizens had responded to state media and text message campaigns urging volunteers to fight, and said he personally intended to join them.

A senior commander from the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard called on parents to send their children to man checkpoints across the country.

Iranian official Alireza Rahimi issued a video appeal calling on “all young people, athletes, artists, students, university students and their professors” to form human chains around the country’s power plants to shield them from potential American strikes.

It was unclear how many heeded the call. One major power plant in Tehran had reportedly been closed off for security reasons by the time the demonstration was set to begin.

The Revolutionary Guard issued a stark warning of its own, threatening to “deprive the U.S. and its allies of the region’s oil and gas for years” and expand attacks across the Gulf if Trump follows through on his threats.

Trump’s threats to destroy power plants and bridges civilian infrastructure drew sharp condemnation from the international community.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said such attacks are “barred by the rules of war, international law,” warning they would trigger “a new phase of escalation, of reprisals, that would drag the region and the world economy into a vicious circle.”

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, through his spokesperson, also warned Washington that strikes on civilian infrastructure are prohibited under international law.

Legal experts have noted that deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure can constitute a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. Trump, when asked by reporters, said he was “not at all” concerned about committing war crimes.

Behind the scenes, diplomatic channels have not completely closed. Officials involved in negotiations confirmed that talks were still ongoing as of Tuesday.

However, Iran had rejected the latest American proposal, and it remained deeply uncertain whether any agreement could be reached before Trump’s deadline expired.

The coming hours will determine whether diplomacy can pull the two sides back from the brink or whether the world witnesses one of the most devastating escalations of military force in the modern Middle East.