President Donald Trump appeared to set a new deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, writing on social media this afternoon, “Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time!”
The post comes after he wrote just hours earlier that “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
CNN has reached out to the White House for more details on the president’s recent post.
The president has repeatedly threatened to target Iranian power facilities if Tehran does not fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz on his timeline and recently said that “time is running out.”
When Trump first made the threat late last month, he said the country had just 48 hours to open up the critical waterway. He then pushed that deadline back several days before delaying it again to Monday, April 6, at 8 p.m. ET.
In a phone interview today, the president has repeated that he plans to take action on Tuesday if a deal is not reached.
“If they don’t make a deal,” Trump said in an interview with Axios, “I am blowing up everything over there.”
“If they don’t come through, if they want to keep it closed, they’re going to lose every power plant and every other plant they have in the whole country,” Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
“And if they don’t do something by Tuesday evening, they won’t have any power plants and they won’t have any bridges standing,” he added.
Some context: Targeting critical civilian infrastructure, which includes power plants, could be considered a war crime.
Trump has also threatened to strike water treatment plants. The Geneva Conventions and its protocols define objects indispensable to the survival of a civilian population as illegal military targets and clearly cites “drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation work” as falling into that category.
