Trump threatens Iran’s energy, water sites if deal isn’t reached soon; Tehran calls U.S. plan ‘unrealistic’

WASHINGTON, Mar 31 (APP): President Donald Trump said on Monday that progress was being made in “serious discussions” with Iran about ending the US-Israeli war on Iran, but warned that the US would destroy Iranian energy sites and infrastructure if a deal is not reached in the near future.

Trump, zigzagging from claims of diplomatic headway to renewed threats of destruction, said in a Truth Social post that there had been “great progress” in talks with Tehran but warned that if they failed to produce an agreement, he would order the bombardment of Iranian power plants, oil infrastructure and potentially desalination plants. The president has repeatedly threatened such attacks in recent weeks, only to back down, as the global economy reels from the risk to energy supplies.

Despite Trump’s claim that the United States is in talks with “a new, and more reasonable, regime” in Iran, however, there has been little apparent progress in the negotiations. Iran has denied holding substantive talks with the United States and has rejected the Trump administration’s conditions as unreasonable.

The war has raged on, drawing in much of the Middle East, sending oil and gas prices skyrocketing and fracturing Trump’s political support at home.

As Trump strains to find an end to a conflict he originally mused would last four to five weeks, he has alternately narrowed his aims — arguing on Sunday that “regime change” in Iran had already been achieved — and raised the prospect of escalation, ordering thousands more U.S. troops to the Middle East, including Marines and Special Operations Forces.

On Sunday, Trump said that Iran had agreed to allow 20 more oil cargo ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, where Tehran’s blockade has all but closed a vital route for oil, gas and fertilizer shipments.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said Iran was “not at all happy that people in other countries are facing difficulties due to fuel and food prices,” and urged those countries to press Israel and the United States to end their attacks on Iran.

On Monday, two Chinese-owned commercial vessels transited the waterway, according to MarineTraffic, a ship tracking platform. The crossings offered an initial indication that Iran could be relaxing its stranglehold over the strait, the platform said. But a short time later, Trump renewed his threats to bombard Iran’s “Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island,” from which Iran exports the majority of its oil, if talks on ending the war failed.