Iran War Live Updates: Trump Escalates Threat to Hit Iranian Power Plants After U.S. Rescues Downed Airman

If Iran’s government did not, he said, U.S. forces would target the country’s energy infrastructure, which supplies power for millions of civilians. Mr. Trump made the point in a crudely worded social media post.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” Mr. Trump said. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH.”

“Praise be to Allah,” he added, using the Muslim name for God.

In response to Mr. Trump, Mizan, an outlet affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, said that “Iran’s steadfastness and resistance have driven Trump to the brink of madness.” Mizan also said he had insulted the Iranians with “vile” language.

The president has previously postponed his deadline to attack twice. On Sunday, he told Fox News that he believed he could reach a deal with Iran by Monday, then turned back to threats, saying that if Iran did not make a deal, he was “considering blowing everything up” and taking control of its oil. The Omani foreign ministry said officials had discussed how to reopen the Strait of Hormuz with Iranian counterparts without reaching a definitive agreement.

Iran has threatened to retaliate by intensifying its attacks on critical infrastructure in Israel and Arab states that are allied with the United States. An escalation could further derail the lives of civilians throughout the region and add to worries about the global economy, which has been rattled by soaring energy prices since the start of the war.

Over the past two days, the U.S. military has been in a race with Iranian armed forces to find the missing airman after an F-15E jet was shot down over Iran on Friday. It was the first known instance of a U.S. combat aircraft being downed by enemy fire since the start of the war.

The plane’s pilot was quickly rescued. But a second officer was stranded in Iran and injured in the incident. American commandoes found the airman deep inside Iranian territory under the cover of darkness.

There were no U.S. casualties among the rescue team, Mr. Trump said on Sunday. The rescued officer had “sustained injuries, but he will be just fine,” Mr. Trump added.

The incident underscored Iran’s ability to fight back despite weeks of attacks on its military arsenal. Another U.S. aircraft, an A-10 Warthog attack plane, crashed near the Strait of Hormuz at about the same time, and the lone pilot was rescued, two U.S. officials said.

On Sunday, Israel and a number of Gulf countries reported attempted drone and missile strikes by Iran. Kuwaiti officials said Iranian drones significantly damaged two power and water desalination plants, and sparked a fire at the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation’s oil complex.

Here’s what else we’re covering:

• Dwindling interceptors: The war in the Middle East has underscored the importance of antimissile interceptors in warfare but the conflict is rapidly depleting global supplies. Israel and Persian Gulf states have managed to weather most Iranian ballistic missile barrages thanks to the sophisticated defenses, but it is unclear how long the stockpiles will last, even as conflicts loom elsewhere around the world. Despite U.S. and Israeli efforts, Iran has been quickly repairing its bombarded missile bunkers and silos, according to U.S. intelligence reports. Read more ›

• Petrochemical factories hit: Israel on Saturday struck a petrochemical complex in Mahshahr, a sprawling industrial center in Iran’s southwest that plays a significant role in the country’s economy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said the targeted sites were part of a “money machine” that brought in revenues for the Iranian government. At least five people were killed and 170 others injured in the attack on the major oil industry hub, state media in Iran reported.

• Warning from oil nations: Eight members of the consortium of influential oil producing nations known as OPEC Plus expressed concern on Sunday about the toll the war was taking on global oil supplies and energy infrastructure in the region. “Restoring damaged energy assets to full capacity is both costly and takes a long time,” the group said in a statement warning of a slow recovery after the war. Read more ›

“The committee stressed that any actions undermining energy supply security, whether through attacks on infrastructure or disruption of international maritime routes, increase market volatility,” the group said in its announcement. It added that “restoring damaged energy assets to full capacity is both costly and takes a long time.”

President Trump on Sunday threatened Iran with further devastation unless it took steps to open the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping lane that has become a linchpin of the war. In an expletive-laden post on Sunday, Mr. Trump ordered Iran to open the strait, “or you’ll be living in hell,” saying that Tuesday would be “power plant day, and bridge day, all wrapped in one.”

Several of the biggest oil-producing members of OPEC Plus have slashed oil production in the face of the severe shipping constraints.

By mid-March, Persian Gulf countries had taken an estimated 10 million barrels of daily oil production offline, or about 10 percent of global supplies, the International Energy Agency said. It forecast that the cuts would deepen as the conflict wore on.

As of Thursday, international oil prices had climbed roughly 50 percent, to $109 a barrel, since the United States and Israel started the war on Feb. 28.

The eight members of OPEC Plus member countries involved in Sunday’s decision were: Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman.

The C.I.A., which traditionally assists with efforts to rescue American pilots trapped behind enemy lines, developed a deception plan to buy time to find the airman by keeping the Iranians away from where he might be, according to a senior administration official. The official and others spoke under the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive rescue operation and intelligence collection.

While U.S. officials did not initially know exactly where the weapons officer was, they knew he had moved from where his ejection seat had hit the ground. They also knew he was injured, adding to the urgency of the search.

While it is unclear exactly what the deception plan involved or how successful it was precisely, the C.I.A. campaign aimed to spread word in Iran that the airman had been found and was moving out of the country in a ground convoy. The hope was that the Iranians would shift their search efforts from the place where the airman was thought to be, to the roads out of the region.

The C.I.A.’s operation did appear to cause confusion and uncertainty among the Iranian forces hunting for the airman, according to a senior administration official.

The airman evaded Iranian forces for more than 24 hours, eventually hiking up a 7,000-foot ridgeline and hiding in a crevice.

All Air Force fighter pilots and weapons officers are equipped with a beacon and a secure communication device for coordinating with rescuers. But airmen are trained not to signal their location constantly, and restrict the use of the beacon, in case enemy forces can also track its location.

A senior administration official declined to describe exactly what piece of technology the C.I.A. had used to locate the airman but said the equipment used was unique to the agency.

As soon as he was found, the agency passed the information to the Pentagon and White House, which enacted their specific plan to extract the officer from his hiding spot, an operation that involved hundreds of special operations troops and other military personnel.

The U.S. military began dropping bombs in the area to keep away Iranian forces. As U.S. commandos moved to where the downed airman was hiding, they fired their weapons to keep Iranian forces away from the rescue site, but did not have to engage in a direct firefight with the Iranians, a U.S. military official said, a possible sign that the deception campaign had lured away at least some of the Iranian forces hunting for him.

Rescue planes then flew the injured airman to Kuwait for medical treatment.

Mr. Trump has never shied away from threats and occasional vulgar language on social media, but this post would have stood out on any day, much less on what most Christians consider the holiest day of the year.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” he wrote a little after 8 a.m. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH. Praise be to Allah.”

The president has swerved in the past week between claiming that the strait is not his problem, because the United States barely purchases oil flowing through the 21-mile wide passage, and threatening to go after civilian infrastructure if Iran continues to restrict which ships can pass — and to charge $2 million tolls to those few ships it lets through.

On Sunday morning he was back in threatening mode, with a vengeance.

Under the Geneva Conventions, striking power plants and bridges that are used primarily by civilians is off limits; they are not considered military targets. Administration officials are already beginning to make the argument that hitting them would not be a war crime because they are also crucial to the missile and nuclear programs. But that loophole could apply to almost any piece of civilian infrastructure, even water supplies.

Mr. Trump’s vehemence may well underscore to the Iranians how powerful a tool control of the strait remains, perhaps their most effective surviving weapon after the loss of their navy, their air force and much of their arsenal of missile and launchers. The strait is not only the passageway for about 20 percent of the global oil supply, it is critical for fertilizer and for helium, which is critical to the manufacture of semiconductors.

Mr. Trump is considering a ground operation to open the strait. But it would be complex — and may well require taking the Iranian shoreline of the strait and perhaps part of the Persian Gulf. Iran has many options to harass shipping — including laying mines and speedboats that can be used to launch shoulder-fired short-range missiles — that might make passage risky enough that shippers will not try to run through the narrow passage.

Mr. Trump has called on European nations, China and India, all of which depend heavily on oil that moves through the strait, to join in an international coalition to keep it open. But because none of those countries were consulted about Mr. Trump’s decision to attack Iran, and some believe the war to be illegal or unwise, they have not yet agreed to participate in what would be a high-risk effort to keep it open.

From the U.S. perspective, President Trump also emerged emboldened, boasting on Sunday about how American forces were able to pull off a risky ground operation and issuing a crudely worded threat that he would begin striking infrastructure targets.

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” he wrote. Calling Iran’s leaders “crazy bastards” and using an expletive, he demanded they open the Strait of Hormuz shipping route, “or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

Iran is now one day away from Mr. Trump’s ultimatum to strike critical Iranian infrastructure if Tehran does not make a deal with Washington, or open the strategic strait. Attacking bridges or power plants, which could plunge Iran’s population of more than 90 million into darkness, would constitute a war crime.

Washington’s ally in the war, Israel, has already launched strikes on critical infrastructure, including a major pharmaceutical plant and its largest petrochemical complex.

Iran has warned it will retaliate by bombarding similar strategic assets in neighboring Gulf countries. Such escalation could be devastating for millions of civilians in the region, and wreak further havoc on the global economy and the already volatile markets.

“Iran’s approach is not to yield to these threats. Because if so, Trump will only continue,” said Sasan Karimi, a political scientist at the University of Tehran and the former deputy vice president for strategy in Iran’s previous government. “So Iran will use its maximum capability to retaliate — and not necessarily proportionally, because Iran’s infrastructure is vital, and hitting it is a violation of international law. A war crime, actually.”

With both sides perceiving themselves as at an advantage, there is currently little hope of making progress on a diplomatic solution to end the crisis, said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director of the International Crisis Group, a research organization. “From this point on, this war will become even more dangerous than it was before,” he said.

“This is exactly the kind of escalation trap that results in mission creep — which is if you constantly think that with more targeting and more pressure, you could eventually be able to force the Iranians to capitulate.”

Another question is whether the successful rescue operation inside Iran will encourage Mr. Trump to try riskier things, such as sending limited ground troops onto islands in the Strait of Hormuz or mounting a special operation to seize Iran’s enriched uranium in an effort to cripple its nuclear program.

“It might give the U.S. more confidence that they can do it,” said Farzan Sabet, an analyst of Iran and weapons systems at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland.

While the successful Iranian strikes have raised doubts about U.S. and Israeli claims of having established “air dominance” over Iranian territory, Mr. Sabet said, U.S. forces may instead conclude they were simply too lax by allowing nonstealth aircraft to fly at low altitudes in a region where they may not have expected Iran to have air defenses.

Yet observers say Iran has now repeatedly shown itself able to strike at U.S. aircraft in ways that should give Washington pause ahead of any further escalation of the war.

Iranian forces have hit a base in Saudi Arabia, striking two U.S. KC-135 aerial refueling planes and destroying an American E-3 early warning detection system. Iran has also been successfully shooting down Israeli and U.S. drones, some military analysts say.

And in retaliation for attacks on its water, energy, and other infrastructure, it has been launching strikes on similar targets across the Gulf.

“In terms of Iran being able to conduct those offensive operations, what they’ve shown us is that when they — so far, more than a month into the war — when they need to hit a target, they can hit,” Mr. Sabet said.

If U.S. forces were to move forward with the kind of major attacks Mr. Trump has threatened, Iran could respond, depending on what was targeted, by hitting desalination facilities that could endanger Gulf citizens’ access to fresh water — or by hitting gas and oil installations, which would plunge markets further into turmoil.

Mr. Karimi, the former Iranian official, urged Arab countries in the Gulf to pressure Washington to back down from such a confrontation.

“Whether it is justified or not from their point of view,” he said, “the whole region will be unsafe while Iran is unsafe.”

Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting from London.

The wars in Ukraine and now the Persian Gulf have highlighted the crucial role interceptors play in protecting cities like Kyiv or Tel Aviv or Riyadh, not to mention American bases in Bahrain, Kuwait and other Gulf states. But the supply chain behind those interceptors has been strained for years, stressed by the war in Ukraine, past engagements with Houthi rebels along the Red Sea and last year’s 12-day war with Iran.

Missile defense experts are sounding increasingly dire warnings that if the war with Iran continues, stockpiles could become dangerously low, leaving allies around the world vulnerable to attacks.

“We started this conflict with a big hole,” said Tom Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The center published a report on the depleting inventory of interceptors in December, before the current conflict even kicked off. “The hole got a lot bigger over the last month as we keep shooting these things off,” Mr. Karako said of the interceptors.

The dwindling supply of interceptors among the United States and its allies is in part attributable to Iran’s tenacious ability to go on the offensive — launching drones and missiles at Israel, American bases and civilian targets in the Gulf.

“Do not hope that you have destroyed our strategic missile production centers, long-range offensive drones” and modern air defense, a spokesman for the leadership of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a video statement on Thursday.

Further, defense doctrine calls for two interceptors fired for each incoming missile, referred to as “shoot — shoot — look.” That means defensive stockpiles are depleted twice as fast as the offensive weapons they are shooting down.

In the current war, the U.S. military coordinates air-defense systems with Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and others. They rely on a variety of launch systems — including Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries, both fired from land, or Standard Missiles launched from Navy warships at sea.

An air-defense system is more than just a glorified quiver of missiles. A THAAD battery, for instance, includes 48 interceptors divided among six launchers mounted on trucks, a command-and-control platform and a radar. A Patriot battery also has a radar set and control station among its components.

In the opening days of the war, Iran conducted strikes aimed at communication and radar systems on at least seven U.S. military sites across the Middle East, trying to effectively blind the systems used to track incoming missiles. It is unclear how successful the strikes were.

The number of interceptors in a nation’s arsenal is a closely guarded secret. No country wants its enemy to know just when it might run out. But analysis of Gulf state defenses suggest the waves of missile and drone attacks by Iran have sorely depleted the interceptor inventories in countries like the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain.

For instance, a report by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, or JINSA, a Washington research organization, estimated that the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain had expended more than three-quarters of their Patriot missile PAC-3 interceptor stockpiles, one of the main defensive missiles in their arsenals. The report relied on an analysis of each nation’s prewar stockpiles and its potential interceptor use since the start of the conflict.

The governments did not respond to a request for comment on the JINSA assessment.

Intercepting missiles has become a routine part of warfare for the United States and its allies, especially Israel, for whom it is a daily part of domestic defense. The interceptor systems provide a security blanket but are not foolproof. Israel’s vaunted, three-tier missile defense system came under growing scrutiny after two Iranian ballistic missiles evaded air defenses near Israel’s main nuclear research facility and reactor last month.

Even when missiles are intercepted, civilians and property are not necessarily out of harm’s way. Falling wreckage from the collision of two missiles can rain down on towns and cities; debris from an intercepted missile killed two people in Abu Dhabi last month.

The rise of cheap drones has complicated the math for militaries using expensive interceptors. An adversary can attack with one-way drones that cost tens of thousands of dollars, forcing its enemy to deploy multimillion-dollar air-defense systems to repel them. And the drones are much more easily and rapidly replaced.

A cease-fire with Iran would not completely solve the interceptor shortage, experts said.

Shortages in interceptor inventories are a global challenge. That was most acutely obvious in Ukraine after Russia invaded four years ago, launching large volleys of missiles, and later drones, at Ukrainian towns and cities, bombardments that continue to this day. In pleading for Western weaponry, Kyiv has regularly emphasized the urgent need for air-defense systems.

But it is not only Ukraine and Middle East countries that are counting on a steady supply of interceptor systems. Countries like Taiwan, South Korea and Japan are relying on missile batteries to deter potential aggression by North Korea or China, and with the nations of Western Europe getting serious about their defenses against Russia, the global nature of the challenge has become apparent.

President Trump has tried to goad the American defense industry into revving up the military supply chain. He signed an executive order in January limiting stock buybacks and dividends by defense contractors unless they sped up production and quality. In March, he hosted the chief executives of major contractors like Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin at the White House to discuss ramping up production.

Lockheed Martin announced plans in January to more than triple production of PAC-3 interceptors for Patriot batteries.

South Korean defense manufacturers have increasingly stepped in to try to fill the gap. The United Arab Emirates began using a Korean-made air-defense system last month that had never before been tested in combat but that reportedly shot down 29 of 30 of the missiles and drones it targeted, according to the South Korean news media and a government official.

But the complexity of the interceptor systems makes them hard to mass produce quickly, said Tal Inbar, an Israeli senior research fellow at the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a nonprofit based in Virginia.

Mr. Inbar said that the kinds of interceptors used in THAAD or Arrow-3 systems require sub-components that are made to order, advanced electronics and a great deal of testing. “There are no stockpiles of those systems,” he said, “so again you are relying on other factories and in some cases other countries.”

“It’s not like a factory producing 9-millimeter pistol ammunition,” he said.

John Ismay contributed reporting.

There were no U.S. casualties among the rescue team, Mr. Trump said. All the commandos and the weapons officer returned safely, a senior U.S. military official said. Rescue planes flew the injured airman to Kuwait for medical treatment.

“WE GOT HIM!,” Mr. Trump exclaimed in the social media post. “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.”

Mr. Trump said that the rescued officer, an Air Force colonel, had “sustained injuries, but he will be just fine.”

The two crew members of the F-15E Strike Eagle, the first lost to enemy fire in the monthlong war, had both ejected from the cockpit on Friday after Iran’s military struck their plane. The jet’s pilot was quickly rescued, but its weapons systems officer could not be found, setting off an urgent search with major consequences for Mr. Trump and the war that the United States and Israel launched on Feb. 28.

Finding the downed airman, who had been hiding behind enemy lines with little more than a pistol as defense, had been the U.S. military’s highest priority over the last 48 hours.

After ejecting from the F-15E, the officer hid in a mountain crevice, his location initially unknown to either Americans trying to rescue him, or Iranians trying to capture him.

The C.I.A. initiated a deception campaign to try to confuse Iranian forces, and convince them the airman had already been rescued and was moving out of the country in a ground convoy, a senior administration official said. The agency also ultimately found the airman’s hiding place, passing the information on to the Pentagon, which mounted the rescue operation, the senior administration official said.

Mr. Trump’s exultant post celebrating the Air Force officer’s rescue contrasted with his threat on Saturday morning to strike Iran’s power infrastructure if the government did not open up the Strait of Hormuz to cargo traffic.

“Time is running out - 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them,” Mr. Trump wrote.

The downing of the F-15E and the crash of another U.S. warplane, an A-10 Warthog, a short time later on Friday, raised questions about how much capability Iran retained after a month of attacks. Mr. Trump hailed the rescue as evidence that Iran’s defenses had been badly damaged, if not destroyed.

“The fact that we were able to pull off both of these operations, without a SINGLE American killed, or even wounded, just proves once again, that we have achieved overwhelming Air Dominance and Superiority over the Iranian skies,” he wrote.

The mission to save the crew member employed hundreds of special forces troops and other military personnel, dozens of U.S. warplanes, helicopters, and cyber, space and other intelligence capabilities.

The airman evaded Iranian forces for more than 24 hours, at one point hiking up a 7,000-foot ridgeline, a senior U.S. military official said. U.S. attack aircraft dropped bombs and opened fire on Iranian convoys to keep them away from the area where the airman was hiding. As U.S. commandos converged on the downed airman, they fired their weapons to keep Iranian forces away from the rescue site, but did not engage in a firefight with the Iranians, a U.S. military official said.

The airman was equipped with a beacon and a secure communication device for coordinating with forces mounting the rescue. But the airman restricted the use of his beacon, because Iranian forces could have detected its signal as well.

A senior U.S. military official described the mission to rescue the airman as one of the most challenging and complex in the history of U.S. special operations given the mountainous terrain, the airman’s injuries and Iranian forces rushing to the location.

In a final twist after the weapons officer was rescued, two transport planes that would carry the commandos and the airmen to safety got stuck at a remote base in Iran. Commanders decided to fly in three new planes to extract all the U.S. military personnel and the airman, and they blew up the two disabled planes rather than have them fall into Iranian hands.

The F-15E fighter jet was shot down in a region of Iran where there is significant opposition to the Iranian government. As a result, the airman may have been able to rely on locals for shelter and assistance.

The crash also drew the attention of Iranian military forces, who were reported to have been scouring the area. The Iranian government asked locals for help finding the downed airman, and had offered a reward for the airman’s capture.

The C.I.A. often also plays a role in making contact with civilians willing to help vulnerable troops stay alive, a process known as “unconventional assisted recovery.”