Topline
President Donald Trump said the U.S. would “probably” hit Iran with strikes again on Wednesday night, telling reporters at a NATO summit “they are behaving very badly” before implying the U.S. could target Iran’s bridges, power plants and desalination plants and speculating about possibly seizing Kharg Island, where Iran has oil facilities.
The U.S. launched renewed strikes on Iran on Tuesday in response to Iranian attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
Getty Images
Key Facts
“We hit them very hard last night,” Trump told reporters at a NATO summit in Turkey, before quickly adding “we’ll probably hit them hard again tonight”—offering Iran what he called “a little warning.”
Later, Trump said the U.S. wasn’t even “attacking at the highest level,” before speculating that the U.S. could “in one day, we knock down every single bridge in Iran, there’s not a thing they could do about it.”
Trump also listed Iran’s power plants and desalination plants as possible targets, returning to his past threats against the country’s civilian infrastructure he repeated at the height of the war.
He also mused about “taking over Kharg Island,” a heavily fortified island in the Persian Gulf home to facilities that process an estimated 90% of Iran’s oil exports—which he said was one of the targets of last night’s air strikes.
Earlier on Wednesday, Trump said he thought the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran was “over,” calling further negotiations with Iranian leadership a “waste of time.”
This is a breaking story and will be updated.