Over the past week, President Donald Trump has cycled through multiple approaches to the Strait of Hormuz crisis, and on Saturday he escalated again with an ultimatum aimed at Iran’s civilian energy infrastructure. While his earlier messaging emphasized U.S. success in hitting Iran’s military assets—such as its air force, navy and missile production—Trump’s latest warning was directed at power plants that supply electricity used by homes and hospitals. In the ultimatum issued as Trump was in Florida, he told Iran that if it did not reopen the waterway within 48 hours, the United States would “obliterate” the country’s power plants.
Trump’s change has intensified criticism, with opponents arguing that the strategy reflects a search for a solution without a clear end point. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said Trump had “no plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz” and that the threat targeted “Iran’s civil power plants,” calling it “This would be a war crime.” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Trump had “lost control of the war and he is panicking,” responding to the president’s post.
The ultimatum also triggered legal concerns among scholars about whether such strikes could be lawful under wartime targeting rules. Geoffrey Corn, a law professor at Texas Tech University and a retired Army military lawyer, said Trump’s social media message lacked the careful legal scrutiny needed to justify an attack on civilian infrastructure. Corn said the threat “certainly has a feeling of ready, fire, aim,” and warned that “That type of widespread attack would probably be a war crime.” In his assessment, military leaders could face a choice between carrying out what he described as a war crime or refusing and facing criminal sanction for willful disobedience.
Corn said the laws governing warfare do not explicitly ban attacks on power plants, but he described the justification as a high bar. Under that view, any attack would be allowed only if analysis found that military advantages outweighed civilian harm, because the rules of war are designed to separate civilian and military targets. He said a widespread attack on the energy grid would likely fail that balancing.
Trump’s threat followed several earlier shifts in messaging about how the strait would be kept open or reopened. The president tried diplomacy last weekend by calling for a new international coalition to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz, but allies turned him down. Trump then suggested the United States could manage on its own, and Friday he raised the possibility that other countries would have to take over as the United States looked for an exit—before later indicating the waterway would “open itself.” During the same period, the strategy also intersected with efforts to affect fuel markets: Trump’s Treasury Department lifted sanctions on some Iranian oil for the first time in decades, reducing one kind of pressure Washington traditionally used as leverage against Tehran. It was not clear, however, how much that would lower pump prices or how the administration would keep Iran from cashing in from renewed sales.
Congressional and legal critics also questioned whether Trump had an actionable plan after earlier communications. In remarks carried by ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said, “You can’t all of a sudden walk away after you’ve kind of created the event and expect other people to pick it up,” addressing the implication that the burden might shift to others. The speed of Trump’s successive adjustments has contributed to the focus on whether the administration can manage escalation while also reaching a stable outcome for shipping through the chokepoint.
U.S. officials defended the most recent approach and sought to frame energy infrastructure as linked to Iran’s war effort. Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Iran’s Revolutionary Guard controls much of the country’s infrastructure and is using it to power the war effort. Speaking on Fox News, Waltz said potential targets include “gas-fired thermal power plants and other types of plants,” and he called the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. Waltz also said he wanted to get ahead of “hand-wringing” from the global community and added, “The president is not messing around,” according to the account.
NATO’s secretary-general, Mark Rutte, tried to calm tensions while echoing confidence in outside implementation efforts. He said he understood Trump’s anger and stressed that more than 20 countries were “coming together to implement his vision” of making the strait navigable as soon as possible. Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter, offered a caution as well, telling CNN that he wanted to “leave everything in the country intact,” adding that “the people who come after this regime are going to be able to rebuild and reconstitute.”
Iranian officials have warned that Trump’s threat could backfire. The AP account said that if the threat is carried out, Iranian leaders would completely close the strait and retaliate against U.S. and Israeli infrastructure. Separate from that potential response, Iran’s U.N. ambassador warned in a letter to the Security Council that deliberately targeting power plants would be inherently indiscriminate and a war crime, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency.
All of the new pressure also arrived amid renewed scrutiny of the administration’s conduct in the war. The White House has faced backlash after the United States was blamed for a missile strike on an Iranian elementary school that killed more than 165 people, according to the AP report. The latest ultimatum, and the expanding discussion around the legality of striking energy systems, has left lawmakers and legal experts focused on whether the administration’s approach balances any military goals against the risks to civilians.
It remains unclear how the administration would carry out the threat in practice, including which power plants might be targeted and what criteria would be used. Trump provided limited detail, telling Iran it would be given until Monday to reopen the strait. In response, Trump’s aides offered a rationale that tied infrastructure to Iran’s military capacity—while critics argued the messaging reflected a rapidly changing strategy that could widen harm and invite deeper retaliation.