“Unbalanced and foolish,” says Tehran after the US President Donald Trump gave a 48-hour deadline, warning Iran to open the crucial Strait of Hormuz.
“The doors of hell will be opened to you” if Iran’s infrastructure is attacked, Gen Ali Abdollahi Aliabadi with the country’s joint military command said late Saturday in response to Trump’s renewed threat, state media reported.
In turn, the general threatened all infrastructure used by the US military in the region.
Trump has called Tehran “beaten and completely decimated” in the war, now in its sixth week, but the downing of two US warplanes on Friday and Iran’s call to find the “enemy pilot” have again raised the stakes. The search for a missing US military pilot continued Saturday in a remote part of the Islamic Republic.
The war began with joint US-Israel strikes on Feb 28 and has killed thousands, shaken global markets, cut off key shipping routes, and spiked fuel prices. Both sides have threatened and hit civilian targets, bringing warnings of possible war crimes.
“We will continue to crush them,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, while also confirming that Israel’s military struck a petrochemical complex in Mahshahr that he said helps to fund the war. Five people were killed, and 170 were injured, Iranian state media reported, citing a provincial security official.
The Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran said that an airstrike hit near its Bushehr nuclear facility, killing a security guard and damaging a support building. The head of Russia’s state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, said 198 workers were being evacuated. It was the fourth time the facility was targeted.
More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran since the war began. 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 US service members have been killed. In Lebanon, more than 1,400 people have been killed, and there have been more than 1 million displaced people. Ten Israeli soldiers have died there.
