U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday made expletive-filled threats against Iranand its infrastructure if it doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz by his Tuesday deadline, after American forces rescued a wounded aviator whose Iran-downed plane fell behind enemy lines.
A defiant Iran struck infrastructure targets in neighboring Gulf Arab countries and threatened to restrict another heavily used waterway, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait off the Arabian Peninsula.
Trump on social media vowed to hit Iran’s power plants and bridges and said the country would be “living in Hell” if the Strait of Hormuz, crucial for global trade, isn’t opened. He ended with “Praise be to Allah.”
Trump has issued such deadlines before but extended them when mediators have claimed progress toward ending the war, which has killed thousands, shaken global markets and spiked fuel prices in just over five weeks.
“It seems Trump has become a phenomenon that neither Iranians nor Americans are able to fully analyze,” Iranian Culture Minister Sayed Reza Salihi-Amiri told visiting Associated Press journalists in an interview in Tehran, adding that the U.S. president “constantly shifts between contradictory positions.”
Major developments we’re following:
- Asian markets gain as investors watch Iran war developments: Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 rose 0.7% to 53,514.39 in afternoon trading. South Korea’s Kospi gained 1.4% to 5,450.33. Benchmark U.S. crude lost 42 cents to $111.12 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, added 64 cents to $109.67 a barrel.
- The death toll from the war has risen to more than 1,900 people in Iran and over 1,200 people in Lebanon. Iran’s government has not updated the toll for days. In Gulf Arab states and the occupied West Bank, more than two dozen people have died, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel and 13 U.S. service members have been killed. Millions of people in Iran and Lebanon have been displaced.