Iran threatens to retaliate against Gulf energy and water after Trump ultimatum
Written by: Maayan Lubell, Alexander Cornwell and Idrees Ali
TEL AVIV/JERUSALEM/WASHINGTON, March 22 (Reuters) – Iran said on Sunday it would hit the energy and water systems of its Gulf neighbors in retaliation and escalate a three-week war if U.S. President Donald Trump follows through on a threat he made a day earlier to strike Iran’s power grid within 48 hours.
The prospect of tit-for-tat attacks on civilian infrastructure could further shake global markets when they reopen on Monday morning and, in some cases, threaten the livelihoods of millions of civilians in the region who rely almost exclusively on desalination plants for water.
After more than three weeks of heavy U.S. and Israeli bombardment that officials say has sharply reduced Iran’s missile capabilities, Tehran continues to demonstrate its ability to carry out attacks. Throughout the night on Sunday, air raid sirens sounded in parts of northern and central Israel, including Tel Aviv, and in the occupied West Bank, warning of incoming missiles from Iran.
Hours earlier, the Israeli military announced that it had completed a wave of attacks on Tehran, targeting a military base and weapons production and storage facilities.
Trump made his warning Saturday evening, less than a day after signaling that the United States might consider ending the conflict as U.S. Marines and heavy landing craft advanced toward the region.
“If Iran’s fuel and energy infrastructure is attacked by the enemy, all energy infrastructure in the region, as well as information technology and water desalination facilities, will belong to the United States and the regime, in accordance with previous warnings,” Iranian military spokesman Ibrahim Zulfakari said, according to state media.
But while attacks on electricity could harm Iran, they could potentially be disastrous for its Gulf neighbors, which consume nearly five times as much energy per capita. Electricity makes sparkling desert cities livable, in part by powering desalination plants in Bahrain and Qatar that produce 100% of the water consumed. Such facilities provide more than 80 percent of the drinking water needs in the United Arab Emirates and 50 percent of the water supply in Saudi Arabia from seawater.
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf went even stricter, writing to X that critical infrastructure and energy facilities in the Middle East could be “irreversibly destroyed” if Iran’s power plants were attacked.
Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard said it would also mean the shipping route through which a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes through Iran’s southern coast would remain closed.
“The Strait of Hormuz will be completely closed and will not be opened until our destroyed power plants are rebuilt,” the Guards said in a statement. he said.
More than 2,000 people have been killed in the war that the United States and Israel launched on February 28, roiling markets, driving up fuel costs, stoking fears of global inflation and shaking the post-war Western alliance.
‘THE TIME BOMB OF INCREASING UNCERTAINTY’
“President Trump’s threat has placed a ticking time bomb of 48 hours of increased uncertainty on the markets,” said IG market analyst Tony Sycamore, who expects stock markets to fall when they reopen on Monday.
Oil prices rose on Friday, finishing the day at their highest level in nearly four years.
Iranian attacks effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, causing the worst oil crisis since the 1970s. The near-shutdown has caused European gas prices to rise by as much as 35% in the past week.
“IF Iran DOES NOT FULLY OPEN THE Strait of Hormuz WITHOUT THREAT within 48 HOURS from this point, the United States of America will strike and destroy various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE LARGEST FIRST!” Trump posted on social media around 7:45 PM EDT (2345 GMT) on Saturday.
Iranian media quoted the country’s representative to the International Maritime Organization as saying the strait was open to all shipping except ships linked to “Iran’s enemies.”
Ali Mousavi said that passage through the waterway would be possible by coordinating security and safety arrangements with Tehran.
Ship tracking data shows that some ships, such as Indian-flagged ships and a Pakistani oil tanker, are negotiating for safe passage through the strait. However, the majority of the ships remained inside.
The United States and Israel say they have seriously weakened Iran’s ability to project power beyond its borders with three weeks of intense air strikes. But Tehran fired its first known long-range ballistic missiles with a range of 4,000 km (2,500 miles) towards a US-British Indian Ocean military base on Friday, pushing the risk of attack beyond the Middle East.
Early Sunday, an Iranian attack on two towns in southern Israel injured dozens of people in what an Israeli hospital described as a major casualty incident. The towns were located close to Israel’s secret nuclear reactor and a number of military facilities, including Nevatim Air Base, one of the country’s largest.
ISRAEL ‘EXPECTS MORE WEEKS OF CONFLICT’
The war is being fought alongside conflict on a separate front between Israel and the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah; Israel said its soldiers raided parts of the armed group in southern Lebanon on Sunday.
Israeli military spokeswoman Brigadier General Effie Defrin told reporters that Israel continues to strike Iran incessantly and that they expect “weeks of more war against Iran and Hezbollah.”
Hezbollah said it attacked many border areas in northern Israel. Israeli emergency services said one person was killed on a kibbutz near the border. Israel later said it was checking whether the death was caused by Israeli fire.
Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets since Israel entered the regional war on March 2, prompting an Israeli offensive in Lebanon that has killed more than 1,000 people.
To end threats to Israelis, Israel said it had instructed the military to step up the demolition of Lebanese homes in “frontline villages” and demolish all bridges over Lebanon’s Litani River, which it said were used for “terrorist activities.”
(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali in Washington, Andrew Mills in Doha, Timour Azhari in Riyadh, Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem and Alexander Cornwell in Tel Aviv; Additional reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Lisa Shumaker, Michael Perry, William Maclean; Editing by Alexander Smith, Peter Graff, Jon Boyle and Diane Craft)
