04-06 17:08 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
US President Trump threatens to destroy power plants, bridges by 8pm Tuesday if Iran doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz.
US President Donald Trump has issued a direct ultimatum to Iran: reopen the Strait of Hormuz by 8pm Eastern Time in the United States on Tuesday, April 7 (midnight GMT on April 8), or face the destruction of national power plants and bridges.
This echoes an earlier March 21 ultimatum in which he threatened to attack Iran’s power plants – “the biggest one first” – if the strait was not fully reopened within 48 hours.
President Trump has since extended that deadline several times, citing progress in negotiations he claims the US is having with Iran to end the ongoing war. Iran denies it is holding direct talks with the US.
While Trump has made grand statements such as “they’re going to lose every power plant and every other plant they have in the whole country”, he has not mentioned specific targets.
The US president has also threatened to destroy the country’s bridges. Over the weekend, a US-Israeli strike hit the B1 bridge in the city of Karaj, west of Tehran. The major highway link, described as the tallest bridge in the Middle East, had been scheduled to be inaugurated soon. It sustained significant damage in the strike.
Legal experts say that targeting civilian sites amounts to “collective punishment”, which is prohibited under the laws of war.
Where are Iran’s power plants?
Iran operates hundreds of power plants which, together, form one of the largest electricity systems in the Middle East, supplying energy to 92 million people.
Most of the country’s power plants are close to major population centres and industrial hubs. The majority of Iran’s population lives in the western half of the country, with Tehran, Mashhad and Isfahan the three largest cities.
Iran has a mixture of gas, coal, hydro, nuclear and oil-fired power plants, but most are gas-fired. In the north and centre of the country, clusters of gas-fired plants supply electricity to the country’s largest population centres, including Tehran, Karaj, Isfahan and Mashhad.
Another major concentration of power plants lies along the Gulf coast. These plants sit close to major gasfields and ports, allowing large thermal stations to run on abundant natural gas.
The coast is also home to the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, Iran’s only nuclear power facility, which has a capacity of 1,000MW. The US and Israel have repeatedly hit this nuclear power plant, raising risks of radioactive contamination far beyond Iran’s borders, the state-run Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) has warned.
Iran also operates a handful of hydropower dams concentrated along the Karun River, the country’s most important source of hydroelectric generation.
Electricity generated from all these plants is fed into a national transmission network operated by Iran Grid Management Company, which distributes power to cities, industries and homes across the country.
The map below shows all of Iran’s power stations with a capacity of 100MW or more.
A 100MW power plant can typically supply electricity to roughly 75,000 to 100,000 homes, depending on consumption patterns.
Iran’s largest power plant by capacity is the Damavand Power Plant located in the Pakdasht area, roughly 50km (31 miles) southeast of Tehran, with a capacity of some 2,900MW, enough to power more than two million homes.
Which are Iran’s most important power plants?
Iran’s largest power plants include:
- Damavand (Pakdasht) Power Plant – Near Tehran.
Fuel: Natural gas (combined-cycle).
Capacity: 2,868MW. - Shahid Salimi Power Plant – Neka, along the Caspian Sea coast.
Fuel: Natural gas.
Capacity: 2,215MW. - Shahid Rajaee Power Plant – Near Qazvin.
Fuel: Natural gas.
Capacity: 2,043MW. - Karun-3 Dam – Khuzestan Province.
Fuel: Hydropower.
Capacity: 2,000MW. - Kerman Power Plant – Kerman.
Fuel: Natural gas.
Capacity: 1,912MW.
Other smaller but strategically important power plants include:
- Ramin Power Plant – Ahvaz, Khuzestan.
Fuel: Gas.
Capacity: 1,903MW. - Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant – On the Gulf.
Fuel: Nuclear.
Capacity: 1,000MW. - Bandar Abbas Power Plant – Near the Strait of Hormuz.
Fuel: Oil.
Capacity: 1,330MW.
How does Iran generate its electricity?
Iran’s electricity system relies heavily on large thermal power plants fuelled by natural gas. The country has one of the world’s largest natural gas reserves, and this fuel forms the backbone of its power system.
In 2025, 86 percent of Iran’s electricity came from natural gas.
Oil-fired plants provide a smaller share, generating roughly seven percent of electricity. Some power stations switch to diesel or fuel oil when natural gas supplies are tight, especially during winter demand peaks.
Hydropower accounts for about five percent of electricity. Large dams on rivers such as the Karun River generate power by using flowing water to spin turbines.
Nuclear energy contributes around two percent of the country’s electricity, mainly from the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, Iran’s only operational nuclear reactor.
Renewables such as solar and wind play a very small role, togethe
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04-06 17:08 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
US president says Washington armed Kurdish Iranian opposition groups during the January demonstrations.
United States President Donald Trump says Washington had armed Iranian opposition groups and protesters during mass antigovernment demonstrations in December and January, in which thousands of people were killed during crackdowns by government forces.
Speaking with Trey Yingst on Fox News in a Sunday morning phone interview, the president said the US had been directly involved in efforts to destabilise and overthrow the Iranian government weeks before strikes were launched on February 28 by the US and Israel across Iran and as American negotiators were engaging with senior Iranian officials in Europe.
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As the US-Israel war on Iran entered its 38th day, at least 2,076 people have been killed in Iran and 26,000 injured.
“President Trump told me the United States sent guns to the Iranian protesters,” Yingst reported on the Fox News channel.
“He told me, ‘We sent them a lot of guns. We sent them to the Kurds.’ And the president says he thinks the Kurds kept them. He went on to say. ‘We sent guns to the protesters, a lot of them.’”
Trump has often framed the decision to strike Iran alongside Israel as partly inspired by his wanting to “free” Iranians from the rule of the Islamic Republic after it cracked down on those protests in January.
But his statements to Yingst could lend weight to Tehran’s own assertions that the protests were not organic and “foreign-backed terrorists” had instigated them. Still, analysts warned that Trump’s frequently shifting statements on Iran mean that it is hard to know with certainty the extent to which the US might have been involved in the protests.
Here’s what we know:
What happened during the protests?
Demonstrations started on December 28 among shopkeepers in downtown Tehran who were angry about a deepening economic crisis and the falling value of the Iranian rial.
Soon, they spread to big and small cities across the country, morphing into nationwide demonstrations as hundreds of thousands of people of all ages took to the streets. Some protesters by then had begun to call for a change in the government.
Rights groups said Iranian authorities cracked down on the protests, especially on January 8 and 9. Thousands of people, most of them young Iranians, were reportedly killed from gunshots and stab wounds, and tens of thousands of others were arrested.
Iranian authorities also cut off the internet “to conceal their crimes”, according to Amnesty International, throwing the country into an information blackout for days.
United Nations Special Rapporteur on Iran Mai Soto said at least 5,000 people were killed and the real death toll could be as high as 20,000.
At least four people have since been executed in connection with the protests, according to Amnesty, with several more people on death row.
The protests were the largest since the September 2022 women’s rights demonstrations that followed the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody. She had been arrested for not properly covering her hair. Amini’s death sparked nationwide demonstrations. Authorities were then also accused of firing at protesters and arresting and eventually executing some of them.
What did the Iranian government say?
Then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said in a rare acknowledgement on January 17 that “several thousands” of people were killed in the protests after days of official hedging on casualty numbers as bodies piled up.
However, Khamenei blamed the deaths not on Iranian forces but on US- and Israel-backed groups that he said had hijacked the economic protests.
Khamenei accused Trump of being a “criminal” and of being personally involved in the instigation.
Tehran has long blamed its enemies, the US and Israel, for fomenting domestic crises, but alleged this time that the US involvement was deeper than usual.
“Those linked to Israel and the US caused massive damage and killed several thousands” during the protests that shook Iran for more than two weeks, Khamenei was quoted as saying by state media.
“The latest anti-Iran sedition was different in that the US president personally became involved,” he added.
Iranian officials later admitted the death toll was about 5,000, including at least 500 security personnel killed by “terrorists and armed rioters”.
An unnamed Iranian official told the Reuters news agency most of the violence and deaths occurred in Kurdish territory in northwestern Iran. That area has long been home to Kurdish separatists and has often recorded unrest.
What did the US government say about the protests?
About a week into the crisis, Trump warned Iran against targeting protesters.
“If Iran sho[o]ts and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is th
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04-06 17:08 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
President Trump says US service member whose fighter jet was shot down over Iran is rescued during two raids.
United States President Donald Trump has announced that the US military has rescued a missing American fighter jet crew member in Iran.
The Air Force officer went missing in a remote part of Iran after the downing of his F-15 jet on Friday. Its two crew members ejected from the plane. The pilot was quickly rescued by US forces, but a search had to be launched for the F-15’s weapons systems officer.
In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump wrote that the US had rescued the second “seriously wounded, and really brave” airman from “deep inside the mountains of Iran”. It was reported that a firefight between US and Iranian forces took place in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province before the rescue. Iran has not confirmed this, however.
Here is how the complicated rescue mission unfolded:
What has Trump said about the rescue?
While the identity of the rescued airman has not been made public, Trump referred to him as “a highly respected Colonel”.
He added that the type of rescue mission that recovered him “is seldom attempted because of the danger to ‘man and equipment'”.
Trump said two raids had taken place, and the pilot was rescued in “broad daylight” during the second raid. It is unclear when precisely the pilot was rescued. The US president wrote that the rescue was “unusual, spending seven hours over Iran”.
In his post, Trump said he would talk more about the rescue mission during a news conference with the US military in the Oval Office of the White House on Monday at 1pm (17:00 GMT).
Trump wrote on Truth Social: “This brave Warrior was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran, being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour, but was never truly alone because his Commander in Chief, Secretary of War, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and fellow Warfighters were monitoring his location 24 hours a day, and diligently planning for his rescue.”
Trump added that he had ordered dozens of aircraft carrying “lethal weapons” to be sent to retrieve the airman, who had managed to evade Iranian forces for two days.
How did the search unfold?
On Friday morning, the US confirmed that an F-15E Strike Eagle had been shot down over southern Iran. The F-15 is a tactical fighter jet used by the US Air Force that first flew in 1972. Modern variants of the jet cost more than $90m each.
State media outlets in Iran showed photos of what they said was wreckage from the F-15 and what appeared to be an ejection seat with an attached parachute.
Trump suggested that the US knew the location of the plane’s second airman and was tracking him as the rescue mission unfolded.
Iran was also racing to locate the airman. Tehran called on the public to hand over the soldier to the authorities in what appeared to be an effort to secure an American prisoner of war.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed on Sunday that Iranian forces had also destroyed two C-130 aircraft and two Black Hawk helicopters during the operation to rescue the US airman in southern Isfahan province.
What do we know about the two C-130 planes that Iran says it destroyed?
The C-130 Hercules and the newer C-130J Super Hercules variant were developed by the US weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin. They are military transport aircraft primarily used for tactical airlifts, troop transport and medical evacuations.
The Wall Street Journal reported that each C-130 costs more than $100m.
The newspaper said in a report on Sunday that the US blew up the C-130 jets on the ground during the rescue operation, quoting an unnamed person familiar with the matter. This unnamed official did not explain how the jets were downed during the rescue operation but told the outlet that it was necessary to destroy them to ensure they did not fall into enemy hands.
Has the US lost other military assets or personnel?
Yes. This conflict has killed 13 US service members and wounded more than 300, the US military’s Central Command said, but no US soldiers have been taken prisoner by Iran.
Since the start of the war on February 28, the US has lost three F-15 fighter jets in what it said was a friendly fire incident over Kuwait. A US military refuelling aircraft also went down over Iraq last month, killing all six crew members.
According to the US military, the last US fighter jet to be shot down by enemy fire before the F-15 on Friday was an A-10 Thunderbolt II during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
At least one Black Hawk helicopter was hit during the initial rescue operation, US officials said, but it managed to stay airborne.
An A-10 Warthog aircraft was also hit near the Strait of Hormuz a short time after the F-15E on Friday, but its pilot was able to eject before the plane crashed and was subsequently rescued. Iranian media reported this aircraft was hit by Iran’s defence systems.
Iran has not yet confirmed that a firefight took place before the F-15 airman’s rescue. Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi, reporting from Tehran, said a firefight appeare
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04-06 17:08 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
Iran, while still reviewing the proposal, says it won’t reopen Hormuz as part of a temporary ceasefire.
Pakistan has proposed a two-stage plan to end the US-Israel war on Iran and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, with both sides now mulling the framework, a source has told the Reuters news agency.
Esmaeil Baghaei, spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Monday acknowledged diplomatic efforts by Pakistan, which has shared a plan with Iran and the United States to end hostilities, according to Reuters.
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Baghaei added that Iran is focused on its security amid the latest attacks from the US and Israel.
A top university in Tehran and the South Pars Petrochemical Plant in Asaluyeh were bombed on Monday, killing at least 34 people in Iran.
Axios first reported on Sunday that the US, Iran and regional mediators were discussing a potential 45-day ceasefire as part of a “two-phased deal” that could lead to a permanent end to the war, citing US, Israeli and regional sources.
The source told Reuters that Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, has been in contact “all night long” with US Vice President JD Vance, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
“All elements need to be agreed today,” the source said, adding the initial understanding would be structured as a memorandum of understanding finalised electronically through Pakistan, the sole communication channel in the talks.
Under the proposal, a ceasefire would take effect immediately, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, with 15 to 20 days given to finalise a broader settlement.
The deal, tentatively dubbed the “Islamabad Accord”, would include a regional framework for the strait, with final in-person talks in the capital of Pakistan.
The final agreement is expected to include Iranian commitments not to pursue nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief and the release of frozen assets, the source said.
‘No reopening of Hormuz’
Tehran has responded by stating that it will not reopen the strait as part of a temporary ceasefire, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Monday, adding that it will not accept deadlines as it reviews the proposal. Washington also lacks the readiness for a permanent ceasefire, the official said.
The US has not yet responded to Pakistan’s plan.
“Pakistan officials tell me that Islamabad is involved in ‘frantic diplomacy’, as they put it,” said Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid.
“The problem they’re facing, as one official put it, is essentially that it’s a schoolboy brawl that they are dealing with. It is egos that they have to manage, and it is also a sea of distrust over which they have to build bridges.”
One source told Javaid that Pakistan is speaking to Iran’s clergy, diplomats, and military commanders, but the level of distrust is still high.
“You heard the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman mention that they have come under attack multiple times by the US and Israel. And then, if there is some sort of rapprochement, if there is some sort of agreement, what are the guarantees that their leaders are not going to be targeted?” said Javaid.
US’s 15-point plan ‘illogical’, says Tehran
Baghaei, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said on Monday that Tehran would never accept a 15-point plan put forward by the US last month. He stated that Tehran had finalised its demands amid recent proposals to end the war, but would reveal them only when appropriate.
He stressed that Iran would not bow to pressure, the IRNA news agency reported.
“A few days ago, they put forward proposals through intermediaries, and the 15-point US plan was reflected through Pakistan and some other friendly countries,” Baghaei said. “Such proposals are both extremely ambitious, unusual, and illogical.”
Baghaei underlined that Iran has its own framework.
“Based on our own interests, based on our own considerations, we codified the set of demands that we had and have,” he said.
The Foreign Ministry spokesman also rejected the idea that engaging with mediators signals weakness.
The latest diplomatic push by Pakistan comes amid escalating hostilities that have raised concerns over disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical artery for global fuel supplies. More than 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas passes through the waterway, which remains under a de facto Iranian blockade.
Trump, in an expletive-laden post on Sunday, threatened to rain “hell” on Tehran if it did not make a deal by the end of Tuesday that would reopen the strait.
More than 2,000 people have been killed in Iran since the war began on February 28, according to Iranian authorities.
Israel has also invaded southern Lebanon and struck Beirut, where Lebanese authorities say 1,461 people, including at least 124 children, have been killed. More than 1.2 million Leban
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04-06 17:08 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
If the chokepoint were shut, along with the Strait of Hormuz, a quarter of the world’s energy supply would be blocked.
A top adviser to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has threatened that Iranian allies could shut the Bab al-Mandeb shipping route as Tehran has effectively done with the Strait of Hormuz.
The Bab-al-Mandeb connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and is a crucial waterway for global oil trade. Its importance has increased since Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz – through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas is shipped in peacetime.
Ali Akbar Velayati, a former Iranian foreign minister and veteran diplomat known for his influence within the establishment, warned on Sunday on X that “the unified command of the Resistance front views Bab al-Mandeb as it does Hormuz”.
“If the White House dares to repeat its foolish mistakes, it will soon realize that the flow of global energy and trade can be disrupted with a single move,” Velayati wrote. Iran’s state-owned Press TV subsequently confirmed his warning.
It follows US President Donald Trump’s threats to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges from Wednesday this week if Tehran does not agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has said that Hormuz is open to ships from countries that negotiate safe passage – apart from the US and Israel. Trump has previously threatened to bomb Iran’s desalination plants.
But if Bab al-Mandeb were closed, it would impact more than the ongoing war – it could compound the global energy supply crisis sparked by the conflict, deepening the economic turmoil being felt in factories, kitchens and at petrol stations around the world.
Where is the Bab al-Mandeb?
The strait is between Yemen to its northeast and Djibouti and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa to the southwest.
It connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, which then extends into the Indian Ocean. It is 29km (18 miles) wide at its narrowest point, limiting traffic to two channels for inbound and outbound shipments and is effectively controlled by the Iran-backed Houthis.
The Yemen-based group is a central part of Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance” – a coalition of groups ideologically or tactically aligned with Tehran which Velayati appears to have been referring to in his Sunday post on X.
Why is the Bab al-Mandeb important for the energy trade?
It is one of the world’s most important shipping routes.
The strait is a vital route through which Saudi Arabia sends its oil to Asia. When the Strait of Hormuz is open, it is also a crucial passageway for Gulf states besides Saudi Arabia to export their crude oil, gas and other fuel to Europe via the Suez Canal or the Sumed (Suez-Mediterranean) Pipeline on Egypt’s Red Sea coast.
In 2024, about 4.1 billion barrels of crude oil and refined petroleum products passed through the strait – that’s 5 percent of the global total.
If Bab al-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz were both shut, that would block 25 percent – or a quarter of the world’s oil and gas supply.
It’s not just oil: About 10 percent of global trade sails through the Bab al-Mandeb, including containers shipped from China, India and other Asian countries to Europe.
With the Strait of Hormuz shut, Bab al-Mandeb’s importance has only grown.
Saudi Arabia, which has traditionally also relied principally on the Hormuz strait to export its oil, has increasingly turned to its Red Sea port of Yanbu to ship crude out through the Bab al-Mandeb.
For this, it has turned to the East West Pipeline, running from the Abqaiq oil processing centre close to the Gulf to Yanbu. The 1,200km (745-mile) pipeline is operated by Saudi oil giant Aramco.
Where the East West Pipeline transferred an average of 770,000 bpd to the Red Sea coast in January and February, according to energy intelligence firm Kpler, Saudi Arabia cranked up its use in March, when Hormuz was shut. By the end of March, oil was flowing at the pipeline’s capacity of 7 million bpd – more than ever before.
How could Iran and its allies shut it?
The Houthis have already shown they can do it. During Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, they blocked the Bab al-Mandeb for what they described as ships associated with Israel or the US.
Because of frequent attacks on shipping, insurers refused to offer reducing traffic. In May 2025, the US and the Houthis agreed to a ceasefire and the Yemeni group has since opened up the Bab al-Mandeb again.
Recent days have shown how easy it would be for the Houthis to repeat the disruption during the war on Gaza.
Since late March, the Houthis have fired missiles and drones at Israel, pointing to their effective entry into the war – for now, against Israel, not the US.
But Nabeel Khoury, a former US diplomat, told Al Jazeera that the missile attacks launched by the Houthis against Israel amounted to “token participation, not full participation”.
“They have fired a couple of missiles as a warning because of all the talk of potential escalation. There are US troops on their way to the region. There’s been talk that if there is no agreement, there might be a full-scale attack on Iran as has not been se
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04-06 17:08 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
Iran says no direct talks during escalating US-Israeli attacks as Trump’s Hormuz deadline nears.
Amid a dual track of threats and diplomacy, United States President Donald Trump tells reporters he would take Iran’s oil and destroy bridges and power plants.
US-Israeli attacks across Iran have killed at least 34 people, including at least six children.
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04-06 01:07 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
Bahrain and the UAE also report attacks resulting in fires, which are put out quickly.
Kuwait says Iranian drone attacks have damaged two power and water desalination plants and sparked fires at two oil facilities but have not caused injuries.
Gulf countries have borne the brunt of Tehran’s response to the US and Israeli strikes on Iran since February 28.
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Fatima Abbas Johar Hayat, a spokesperson for Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity, Water and Renewable Energy, said on Sunday that the “criminal aggression” caused “serious material damage” overnight to the two plants and the outage of two electricity-generating units.
The attacks are the latest to target civilian infrastructure in Kuwait. Other drone attacks overnight caused a fire at the Shuwaikh Oil Sector Complex and “significant damage” to a government office complex, though “no human casualties were recorded”.
Reporting from Kuwait City, Al Jazeera’s Malika Traina referred to the attacks as “devastating news” because “water desalination here and across the Gulf is extremely important. In Kuwait, around 90 percent of the country’s drinking water comes from these plants.”
Later on Sunday, the Kuwait Petroleum Corp reported “significant material losses” after Iranian drone attacks on several of its facilities, according to the KUNA news agency.
The attacks resulted in fires at several facilities, it said, adding that firefighters were deployed to prevent the blazes from spreading to other facilities. No injuries were reported, it added.
Alongside the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait has been at the “epicentre” of Iranian attacks over the past few days, Al Jazeera’s Victoria Gatenby said, reporting from Doha, Qatar.
“The concern here in the region is that if [US] President [Donald] Trump and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, follow through on those threats to escalate attacks on Iran, the result may be that Tehran attacks similar facilities here in the Gulf,” Gatenby said.
Gulf patience ‘not unlimited’
Bahrain also faced Iranian attacks on Sunday.
Bahrain’s Gulf Petrochemical Industries Co said several of its units were subjected to an attack by Iranian drones while, earlier in the day, the country’s national oil company, Bapco Energies, said an oil tank at one of its storage facilities was hit.
Both attacks caused fires, but they were later brought under control and extinguished, Bahraini media reported.
No casualties were reported in either attack, and damage from both was being assessed.
Earlier, Bahrain’s Ministry of the Interior reported on the Bapco Energies fire without specifying where the blaze had broken out.
The Interior Ministry said civil defence crews “extinguished a fire in the facility” that broke out “as a result of the Iranian aggression”.
The announcement came an hour after Bahrain activated air raid sirens.
Authorities in neighbouring Abu Dhabi on Sunday also said they responded to several fires that broke out at the Borouge petrochemical plant and were caused by falling debris from the interception of an air attack.
“Operations at the plant have been immediately suspended pending a damage assessment,” a statement issued by the Abu Dhabi Media Office said.
No injuries have been reported so far, it added.
The UAE’s official news agency WAM later reported that authorities were responding with an incident after the Khor Fakkan port in the Gulf of Oman was targeted.
British maritime security agency UKMTO said “splashes from unknown projectiles” had been reported close to one container ship while it was loading in the key port near the Strait of Hormuz.
In peace time, about 20 percent of the world’s oil passes through the strategic waterway that links the Gulf to the Indian Ocean.
In comments released to the media, UAE presidential advisor Anwar Gargash said Abu Dhabi was ready to “join any American-led effort, international effort to secure navigation in the Strait of Hormuz”.
The Omani state news agency meanwhile reported that Oman and Iran had held talks on easing passage through the strait.
“The experts from both sides put forward a number of visions and proposals regarding it,” it said.
Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, intercepted missiles early on Sunday, the kingdom said.
“Iran has said that it is only really attacking US military bases and US assets in the region, but we know from what’s been happening over the past five weeks and from what Gulf leaders have been saying that they have very much been targeting civilian infrastructure and critical energy infrastructure in this region as well,” Gatenby said.
She said that while Gulf countries have shown “incredible restraint” in the face of attacks over the past five weeks, it is not because they lack the ab
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04-06 01:07 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
Iranian officials dismiss Trump’s ultimatum, condemn latest threats as ‘incitement to war crimes’.
Donald Trump has set a Tuesday deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz or face “hell”, saying the US will hit Iranian power plants and bridges.
Iran says it will respond “in kind” to any attacks on its infrastructure, with senior officials condemning the US president’s remarks as “incitement to war crimes”.
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04-06 00:00 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
Spokesperson Abu Obeida says calling for the group’s disarmament amounts to an attempt to continue Israel’s genocide.
Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida has said that calling for the group’s disarmament amounted to an attempt to continue Israel’s genocide.
Hamas’s armed wing has rejected calls for the Palestinian group to disarm, saying that discussing the issue before Israel fully implements the first phase of the United States-brokered “ceasefire” in Israel’s war on Gaza amounts to an attempt to continue the genocide against the Palestinian people.
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In a televised statement on Sunday, Obeida, who is Hamas’s armed wing spokesperson, said that raising the issue of weapons “in a crude manner” would not be accepted.
The issue of Hamas relinquishing its weapons is a major obstacle in talks to implement US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza, aimed at ending Israel’s war on the besieged territory.
Since the US- and Qatar-brokered “ceasefire” took effect in October, more than 705 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Hamas has told mediators it will not discuss disarmament without guarantees that Israel will completely withdraw from Gaza, three sources told the Reuters news agency last week.
“What the enemy is trying to push through today against the Palestinian resistance, via our brotherly mediators, is extremely dangerous,” Obeida said.
He said the disarmament demands were “nothing but an overt attempt to continue the genocide against our people, something we will not accept under any circumstances”.
It was not immediately clear whether the comments amounted to a formal rejection of the US-backed plan, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms.
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which began after the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel in October 2023, has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians and injured at least 172,000 others.
Obeida urged mediators to pressure Israel to fulfil its commitments under the first phase of the Trump plan before any discussion of the second phase can take place.
“The enemy is the one who undermines the agreement,” he said.
There was no immediate comment from Israel on his remarks.
Obeida also addressed Israel’s role in the US-Israel war on Iran, condemning it for launching strikes on Iran “in the midst of the deception of negotiations, with full collusion and conspiracy with the United States”.
The US had been involved in talks with Iran over its nuclear programme in the weeks before the US and Israel launched the war on February 28.
In Iran, more than 2,000 people have been killed and at least 26,500 others injured since the war began.
Obeida also condemned Israel’s renewed offensive “against sisterly Lebanon”, which it launched on March 2 after the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel.
Israel’s assault on Lebanon has killed more than 1,400 people and displaced over 1.2 million, according to Lebanese authorities.
Obeida commended Iran, Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis for their continued strikes against Israel.
Hamas’s spokesman also condemned the Israeli parliament’s passage of a new death penalty law that only applies to Palestinians, urging people in the West Bank “to seek, by every possible means, to liberate the [Palestinian] prisoners” held in Israeli jails.
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04-06 00:00 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
US president threatens to strike power plants and bridges on Tuesday in an expletive-laden social media post.
United States President Donald Trump has threatened to attack civilian infrastructure inside Iran, including bridges and power plants, if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened by his stated deadline of Monday.
Trump made the threat in an expletive-laden social media post on Sunday, in which he repeated previous threats to pummel vital infrastructure across Iran.
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“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F****** Strait, you crazy b*******, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
On March 26, Trump set a 10-day deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping route for the global energy market, where traffic has ground to a halt since the US and Israel first attacked Iran on February 28.
He told Fox News on Sunday that Iran was currently negotiating with the US and that he believed the two could reach a deal before the deadline.
Iranian officials have slammed Trump’s threats and promised to retaliate for any attacks on their infrastructure.
“Once again, the US president openly threatens to destroy infrastructure essential to civilian survival in Iran,” Iran’s mission to the United Nations said in response to Trump’s threats.
“The international community and all states have legal obligations to prevent such atrocious acts of war crimes. They must act now. Tomorrow is too late,” it added.
Seyyed Mehdi Tabatabaei, deputy for communications at the Iranian president’s office, also stated that the strait would only be reopened following the payment of reparations for damages caused by the war.
He said those payments would come in the form of transit fees through a “new legal regime” around the strait, consistent with previous Iranian statements that it may seek to translate its control over the strait into a system whereby ships passing through pay a fee even after the war ends.
Tabatabaei dismissed Trump’s threats as a sign that the US has “resorted to obscenities and nonsense out of sheer desperation and anger”.
The US president has frequently repeated that Iran is seeking a deal to end the war and that fighting will end soon since the conflict began. Iran has stated that it is not seeking to end the war and has vowed to step up escalation across the region if its infrastructure is targeted.
Throughout the war, US officials have threatened Iran with overwhelming violence if it does not capitulate to US demands. Last week, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth threatened to send Iran “back to the Stone Age”.
US-Israeli strikes have already targeted civilian infrastructure and facilities, including bridges, schools, healthcare facilities, and universities. Experts have warned that some of those strikes could constitute war crimes.
Asked if he was concerned about the impact of targeting infrastructure such as bridges and power plants on Iran’s civilian population, Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he was not.
“No, they want us to do it,” he said during an interview, adding that Iranians are “living in hell”.
Trump also declined to offer a timeline for the end of the war, stating only that “I will let you know pretty soon”.
The US president has said that he will hold a news conference in the White House on Monday.
Trump also offered additional details about the operation to locate and extract the pilot of an F-15E fighter jet that was shot down over Iran on Friday.
“We have rescued the seriously wounded, and really brave, F-15 Crew Member/Officer, from deep inside the mountains of Iran,” he said in a separate social media post on Sunday.
“An AMAZING show of bravery and talent by all!”
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