President Donald Trump ratcheted up pressure on Iran Monday as he threatened the “complete demolition” of its energy plants and bridges unless it meets a Tuesday deadline to reach a peace deal with the United States.
“The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night,” Trump told reporters Monday during a rare appearance in the White House press briefing room.
The president issued a deadline of Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET for Iran’s negotiators to agree to a deal to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend. The strait has become a key point of leverage for Iran as its blockade on oil tankers has sent the price of energy worldwide skyrocketing.
Trump said “very little is off limits” for the U.S. to target if Iran does not relent, and declined to provide specifics on what the U.S. wouldn’t target.
“I don’t want to tell you that … We have a plan because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again,” Trump said. “I mean complete demolition by 12 o’clock, and it will happen over a period of four hours.”
Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared alongside Trump to provide more details on the rescue of a stranded U.S. airman in Iran.
The weapons systems officer was one of two service members in a downed F-15 fighter jet, with the first being rescued on Friday. Trump said the operation to rescue the weapons systems officer involved well over 100 aircraft, including four bombers, 64 fighters, 48 refueling tankers, and 13 rescue aircraft.
“We were bringing them all over, and a lot of it was subterfuge,” Trump said, explaining that part of the operation included confusing Iran by deploying multiple groups in different locations.
Talks between the two countries have hit a critical juncture ahead of Trump’s deadline, with the president writing in a profanity-laden Truth Social post on Easter Sunday that Tuesday would be “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” demanding that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz — or else it would be “living in Hell.”
Iran bridges, power plants to be targets
Trump reiterated during the briefing that the U.S. will target Iran’s energy facilities and bridges if a deal is not reached, despite criticism that such attacks would amount to a war crime.
However, the president said he does not “want that to happen” and floated the possibility that the U.S. might get involved in rebuilding the nation after the war.
“If that’s the case, the last thing we want to do is start with power plants, which are among the most expensive thing, and bridges.”
Trump went on to claim that the targeting of a major bridge in Iran on April 2 came after U.S. negotiators, including Vice President JD Vance and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, told him Iran was backing out of an earlier proposal to end the war.
“I said, ‘Tell them that’s OK. Don’t worry about it, but tell them to look out their window and watch.’ And within 45 minutes, I gave the order to knock out the biggest bridge.”
He continued, “So, do I want to do that? No, do I want to destroy their infrastructure? No. It will take them 100 years to rebuild. Right now, if we left today, it would take them 20 years to rebuild their country, and it would never be as good as it was, and the only way they’re going to be able to rebuild their country is to utilize the genius of the United States of America.”
Trump threatens to jail ‘leaker’
Trump opened his remarks Monday by touting the successful mission to rescue “Dude 44 Bravo,” the downed F-15E weapons systems operator, from Khuzestan Province in Iran.
Still, the president quickly turned his attention to the media, accusing journalists who published the “leak,” specifically that the U.S. had only recovered one of the two airmen on Friday, of endangering service members taking part in the operation, going so far as threatening them with jail time if they refused to give up the “leaker.”
“Whoever it was, we think we’ll be able to find it out, because we’re going to go to the media company that released it, and we’re going to say national security, give it up, or go to jail,” he stated.
Despite Trump’s comments, early indications suggest that Israeli journalist Amit Segal broke the news regarding the downed weapons officer, which he confirmed on his Telegram channel Monday following Trump’s press conference.
Trump, Caine send mixed messages on rescue mission casualties
While discussing the rescue mission itself, which the president characterized as a “breathtaking show of skill and precision,” Trump claimed that American forces sustained zero casualties.
However, Caine disputed that notion during his detailed account of the operation, specifying that the crew of one of the trailing aircraft did sustain injuries from enemy fire.
“After picking up [the weapons officer], the HH 60 Jolly Green was engaged by every single person in Iran who had a small arms weapon,” he noted. “One of the aircraft, the trailing aircraft, took several hits. The crew sustained minor injury, and they are going to be fine.”
Furthermore, Caine explained that one of the A-10 Warthogs was also downed as a result of Iranian attacks. That pilot eventually flew into a neighboring, allied country before determining that the aircraft was “not landable” and eventually ejecting in friendly territory.
Military officers initially split over rescue operation
Trump said Monday that some military officers did not believe conducting a rescue operation for a downed pilot in Iran was a “wise” decision.
The president said Hegseth and Caine wanted to conduct the operation, but that some military leaders warned him about the risks it carried.
“Hundreds of people went into this journey,” Trump said. “Hundreds of people could have been killed. Forget about the equipment. A lot of equipment. Nobody cares. Hundreds of people could have been killed. So we had people that were within the military that said, ‘This is not a wise’ — and I understood that, but I decided to do it.”
Trump described the mission to retrieve the airmen as “risky,” because “we could have ended up with 100 dead, as opposed to one or two.”
He continued, “It’s a hard decision to make, but in the United States military, we leave no American behind.”
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Trump leans on religion in praising operation
The operation to rescue the second U.S. airman was completed on the morning of Easter Sunday, a fact that was highlighted repeatedly by Trump and his administration officials.
“God was watching us,” Trump told reporters. “Well, it was the Easter — we were in an Easter territory, I guess. But God was watching us. Amazing, because when you look at the machinery they took, they took damage.”
Hegseth echoed Trump’s sentiment, saying, “God is good, despite incoming fire and unforgiving conditions. Our troops brought every American home; no American lives were lost.”
The war secretary said that when the downed airman was able to activate his emergency transponder, his first message was “God is good.”
“In that moment of isolation and danger, his faith and fighting spirit shown through,” Hegseth said. “You see, shot down on a Friday, Good Friday, hidden in a cave, a crevice all of Saturday, and rescued on Sunday, flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday, a pilot reborn, all home and accounted for, a nation rejoicing.”