Trump Gives Iran 48 Hours on Hormuz, Threatens Power Plants

Article content

(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump threatened to attack Iran’s power plants if the country didn’t swiftly reopen the Strait of Hormuz to commercial ship traffic after the passage of oil and gas cargoes has been paralyzed.

Article content

Trump said in a social media post Saturday evening that he would “hit and obliterate” Iran’s power plants, beginning with the biggest one, if it didn’t open the strait within 48 hours.

Article content

Article content

The comments from Trump, on his Truth Social media platform, marked a dramatic escalation in the US president’s rhetoric about the strait, a day after he said he was thinking about “winding down” the military operation and that the responsibility for policing Hormuz would fall to the countries reliant on shipping through the corridor.

Article content

Article content

Threats have nearly ground shipments of commodities to a halt through the Strait of Hormuz, which provides transit for roughly 20% of the world’s oil and gas. The resulting energy supply shock has sent crude prices soaring, with international benchmark Brent futures closing at $112.19 on Friday.

Article content

Article content

The declaration also comes despite Trump’s appeal for a halt in Israel’s strikes on energy assets in the region, which risk inspiring retaliatory attacks by Iran on oil and gas infrastructure and further limiting the flow of those supplies to world markets.

Article content

The region’s energy assets have increasingly come into focus as attacks widen, with Israel striking the South Pars gas field last Wednesday, and Iran retaliating with its own volleys on the world’s largest LNG facility, in Qatar.

Article content

More than 100 people were injured in Israel on Saturday by multiple Iranian strikes in the country’s south, as Tehran sought to retaliate for an earlier attack on its own nuclear facility. 

Article content

As the conflict, entering its fourth week, caused a surge in energy prices, the US Treasury has taken the extraordinary step of allowing the sale of Iranian oil and petrochemical products that had already been loaded onto tankers despite existing sanctions.

Article content

Article content

The price spikes pose political risks for Trump at home, just eight months before midterm elections expected to hinge largely on voters’ view of the US economy and consumer costs.

Article content

Although the US is pumping record amounts of oil and gas domestically, and is less reliant on Middle East resources than China, Japan and other nations, the supply shock tied to the strait is being felt in higher prices globally.

Article content

Trump’s mixed signals have left governments and markets scrambling to keep up with the shifting messages. On Friday, he posted: “We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East.”

Article content

But Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Saturday that the joint campaign would intensify significantly, a day after Tehran launched ballistic missiles at the joint US-UK military base in Diego Garcia — nearly 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) away from Iran. 

Article content

The base suffered no damage, according to a person familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity, but the attack demonstrated a capability that goes beyond what Iran was known to have possessed.