WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump is considering an increasingly desperate set of options as he seeks a solution to the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz amid a war with Iran. He moved from calling for diplomacy to secure waterways, to lifting sanctions, and now to an outright threat to the Islamic Republic’s civilian infrastructure.
Trump and his allies insist they have always been prepared for Iran to block the strait, but the Republican president’s erratic strategy has drawn criticism that he is seeking answers after going to war without a clear exit plan. On Saturday, he made his latest attempt, issuing an ultimatum to Iran: Open the strait within 48 hours or the United States will “destroy” the country’s power plants.
Trump’s aides argued that the threat was a hard-line tactic to force Iran into submission. Opponents see this as a failure of a president who miscalculated how to get out of a geopolitical quagmire.
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said: “Trump has no plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, so he is threatening to attack civilian power plants in Iran.” He added: “This would constitute a war crime.”
“He’s lost control of the war and he’s panicking,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said in response to Trump’s post.
Over the course of about a week, Trump repeatedly changed his tune on the key waterway that transports oil and natural gas around the world. Trump’s sense of urgency is growing as soaring oil prices roil global markets and squeeze U.S. consumers months before crucial midterm elections.
Trump and diplomacy
Trump attempted a diplomatic solution over the weekend, calling for a new international coalition to send warships to the strait.
The allies rejected him. Trump later said the United States could handle it on its own. On Friday, he said that as the United States seeks to withdraw, other countries will have to take over. Hours later, he said the waterway would “open on its own” in some way.
“You can’t create an event and then suddenly walk away and expect someone else to take it over,” said Republican Sen. Thom Tillis. told ABC’s “This Week.”
The Trump Treasury Department on Friday made its latest attempt to lift sanctions on some Iranian oil for the first time in decades to combat soaring natural gas prices. This relieves pressure that Washington has traditionally used against Tehran.
The goal is to deliver millions more barrels of oil to global markets. However, it is unclear how much of an impact this will have on lowering oil prices or how the government will prevent Iran from profiting from new sales.
The U.S. government earlier temporarily lifted sanctions on some Russian oil.
An ultimatum to Iran
The ultimatum issued by Trump as he spent the weekend in Florida carried a decidedly aggressive threat. His previous messages have focused on U.S. successes against Iran’s air force, navy and missile production. This time, the targets at risk are the energy infrastructure that powers hospitals, homes and more.
Geoffrey Corn, a military law professor at Texas Tech University, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and a former military lawyer, said his social media post, which totaled 51 words, mostly in capital letters, did not appear to have undergone the rigorous legal scrutiny needed to justify an attack on civilian infrastructure.
“It does have a sense of ready, fire, aim,” Cohen said of Trump’s mobile strategy.
“Once he unleashed this torrent of violence, he overestimated his ability to control events.”
Cohen said such widespread attacks could amount to war crimes. For military leaders, he said, this could force them to make a choice: follow orders and commit war crimes, or refuse and face criminal sanctions for willful disobedience.
Legal scholars say laws governing war do not explicitly prohibit attacks on power plants, but the tactic is only allowed if an analysis finds the military advantage outweighs civilian harm. It is considered a high threshold to cross because the core of the rules of war is to distinguish between civilian and military objectives.
Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations warned in a letter to the Security Council that deliberate attacks on power plants are essentially indiscriminate and a war crime, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
The White House is already facing backlash after the United States was blamed for a missile attack on an Iranian elementary school that killed more than 165 people.
Trump aides justify latest attempts to control crisis
Trump provided no details about which plants might be targeted or how. He gave Iran until Monday to reopen the strait or the United States will attack “every power plant, starting with the largest!”
Trump’s team defended him on Sunday, justifying attacks on Iran’s energy grid.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Walz said Iran’s Revolutionary Guards control much of the country’s infrastructure and use it to power the war. He said potential targets included “gas-fired power plants and other types of factories”.
Speaking on Fox News, Walz said he wanted to avoid “despair” from the international community, calling the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization. “The president is not messing around,” he said.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who is close to Trump, tried to calm tensions. He said he understood Trump’s anger and emphasized that more than 20 countries were “working together to realize his vision” to make the strait navigable as soon as possible.
Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Yechel Wright, warned against a full-scale attack as Trump has threatened. “We want to leave everything intact in this country so that the people who follow this regime can rebuild and reorganize,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Trump’s threat could backfire: If implemented, Iranian leaders say they will shut down the strait entirely and retaliate against U.S. and Israeli infrastructure.
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Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this report.
