Trump threatens obliteration of Iran’s energy sites if new deal isn’t reached with ‘new regime’

The president said last week he would give Iran until April 6 to agree to the deal, before carrying out “energy plant destruction.” 

“The United States of America is in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran,” Trump said in a post to Truth Social on Monday.

“Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched,’” he continued. “This will be in retribution for our many soldiers, and others, that Iran has butchered and killed over the old Regime’s 47 year ‘Reign of Terror.’”

The war began on Feb. 28, when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran, citing in part concerns about the regime’s nuclear program. The U.S. has been in peace talks with Iran since roughly March 21, according to Trump, with Pakistan serving as a third-party mediator in recent days. 

Iran has publicly downplayed the negotiations, claiming on Sunday that talk of any concessions is “fake.” The same day,  Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, cited U.S. military buildup in the region as a reason not to engage in peace talks. 

“The enemy, openly, sends messages of negotiation and dialogue, but secretly is planning a ground attack,” he said. 

But the White House has expressed confidence in recent days that new leadership in Iran, brought to the forefront after military strikes decimated tiers of Tehran’s top officials, is privately more amenable to talks. Trump said Sunday evening that he’s dealing with “a new group of people that we’ve never dealt with before that are acting very reasonable.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio reaffirmed the administration’s confidence that the operation in Iran would be completed in “weeks not months,” on Monday morning.

“we are destroying Iran’s navy. We are destroying their ability their missile launches by a significant percentage. We’re going to wipe out their defense industrial base, meaning their ability to make new missiles and new drones in the future, because it pose a great threat to the region,” Rubio said.

The president has repeatedly extended deadlines for Iran to agree to a U.S. peace proposal, delaying promised strikes on power plants and other energy infrastructure as he said Tehran was engaged in negotiations. Still, while he has claimed negotiations are going well for the U.S., Trump has also said the “Iranian negotiators are very different and ‘strange.’” 

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“They are ‘begging’ us to make a deal, which they should be doing since they have been militarily obliterated, with zero chance of a comeback, and yet they publicly state that they are only ‘looking at our proposal,’” Trump said last Thursday. “WRONG!!! They better get serious soon, before it is too late, because once that happens, there is NO TURNING BACK, and it won’t be pretty!” 

If the U.S. chooses to spare Iran’s energy infrastructure, Trump has teased a takeover of the country’s oil industry, similar to the administration’s approach in Venezuela. 

On Sunday, he said the U.S. could take over Kharg Island “very easily.” 

“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” Trump told the Financial Times. “It would also mean we had to be there [in Kharg Island] for a while.”