What Trump’s threat to strike Iran’s power grid could unleash

Trump warned on Sunday that if the Strait of Hormuz is not opened by Tuesday, the United States could target Iran’s power plants and bridges.

Tehran has responded defiantly, warning that the Strait of Hormuz will not return to normal and signaling that it would retaliate if critical infrastructure were attacked.

Iran’s electricity system relies overwhelmingly on thermal power plants, most of them fueled by natural gas. A relatively small number of large facilities supply major urban and industrial centers, including Tehran and other key regions.

Among the most prominent facilities is the Damavand combined-cycle power plant east of Tehran, one of the country’s largest electricity producers and a key supplier to the capital’s metropolitan area.

Other large plants, including Neka on the Caspian coast and Shahid Montazeri near Isfahan, also play central roles in the national grid.

Strikes could temporarily remove large amounts of generating capacity without requiring prolonged bombing campaigns.

Inside Iran

Even limited damage to several major facilities could lead to rolling blackouts across large parts of the country.

Hospitals depend on stable power for life-support equipment and medical systems. Water pumping and treatment facilities require electricity to maintain supply, while telecommunications networks, factories and transport systems all rely on uninterrupted energy.

Iran’s economy is already under pressure from sanctions, high inflation and environmental challenges such as drought. Large-scale power disruptions could deepen these strains, affecting everything from factories to household water supplies.

Because many components used in large power plants must be imported, repairing damaged facilities could also take time, particularly under existing sanctions and trade restrictions.

Regional retaliation

Iran has signaled that it would respond proportionally if its energy infrastructure were attacked.

Regional energy systems present obvious targets. Persian Gulf oil facilities, desalination plants that supply drinking water to major cities and Israeli infrastructure could all become potential objectives in a cycle of reciprocal strikes.

Tehran could also retaliate through allied groups. Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen have both demonstrated the ability to target infrastructure and shipping routes, raising the possibility that attacks could spread beyond Iran itself.

Once energy systems become targets, they become shared vulnerabilities across the region.

A dangerous precedent

Targeting power plants also raises legal and ethical questions.

Electricity systems support civilian life, even if they may also serve military needs. International humanitarian law places limits on attacks against civilian infrastructure when the harm to civilians could be disproportionate to military advantage.

Human rights organizations have repeatedly warned that strikes on power systems can have cascading humanitarian effects, particularly in densely populated areas.

The threat to strike Iran’s electricity grid reflects a broader shift in modern conflict, where infrastructure itself increasingly becomes a tool of coercion.

While such attacks may promise short-term strategic leverage, they also risk opening a cycle of infrastructure warfare. Energy systems, water facilities, ports and communications networks could all become targets in a conflict that spreads beyond traditional military objectives.

In a region already marked by volatility, that shift could transform a localized confrontation into a broader and more unpredictable struggle in which societies themselves, rather than armies, become the pressure points of war.

Global impact

At the center of the confrontation remains the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints.

Roughly 20 million barrels of oil pass through the narrow waterway each day—about a fifth of global seaborne oil trade. Any prolonged disruption could push oil prices sharply higher and ripple through global supply chains.

Insurance costs for shipping could rise, tanker traffic could fall and energy-importing economies, particularly in Asia, could face new supply shocks.

Oil prices reflected those fears at the start of the trading week, with crude jumping at market open Monday as the confrontation intensified.

Analysts warn prices could rise significantly further if the conflict escalates or if shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted.

They ignite fierce controversy, yet they also summon an unexpected surge of public approval across Iran. Civilians dispatch streams of video clips to Iran International. The clips capture Iranians who voice heartfelt gratitude to President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for striking at the very sinews of the regime’s repressive machine. These voices of thanks now confront a sterner question: Can the free world justify blows against targets that the regime has cunningly woven into the fabric of civilian life, without exacting a price too heavy for the Iranian people to bear?

For decades, the Islamic Republic has masterfully blurred the frontier between civilian and military domains and has woven them into a single, sinister tapestry. Nowhere does this fusion reveal itself more starkly than at the Pasteur Institute. Long before the present strikes, foreign governments sounded the alarm on proliferation dangers. Japan designated the institute an entity of concern for biological and chemical weapons capabilities in 2007. Britain followed in 2008. U.S. Department of Justice records from 2014 expose illicit transfers of sensitive equipment linked to covert programmes. Research has shown how the regime, by the early 1990s, quietly transplanted elements of its biological weapons research into civilian cover at the Pasteur and Razi Institutes, masquerading under the noble guise of vaccine development and medical science. Open sources may yield no final smoking gun of active weaponisation on the day of the strikes, yet the entrenched pattern of state-directed dual-use work demands unflinching scrutiny of these sites.

The regime carries this dark art far beyond the laboratory walls. In late 2022 and early 2023, the regime unleashed chemical assaults on girls’ schools spanning 91 institutions across 20 provinces, mere months after the Woman, Life, Freedom protests erupted. These attacks poisoned over 1,200 students with toxic gas and sent them to hospitals in agony. UN experts and Amnesty International branded the campaign deliberate. The regime singled out high school teenagers—the very cohort, together with university students, that will form the backbone of any future uprising against tyranny. Its feeble response and contemptuous dismissal of the victims’ suffering as mere “hysteria” only fuel the gravest suspicions of complicity. Such a damning record forbids any illusion that sites like the Pasteur Institute stand as pure civilian sanctuaries. It warns, moreover, that once the present storm passes, the regime may unleash similar horrors against ever wider ranks of Iran’s youth.

Academic halls face the same grim reckoning. Probing investigations by The Globe and Mail and The Guardian unmask how researchers from Sharif University of Technology, Amir Kabir University of Technology, and Isfahan University of Technology—often tied to IRGC channels—pursued advanced training and partnerships at Western seats of learning: the University of Waterloo in Canada, leading Australian institutions, and Britain’s finest, including Southampton, Imperial College London, and Cambridge. Their work has zeroed in on microwave engineering, radio frequency systems, missile guidance, and drone propulsion. When the regime systematically bends scholarly pursuit toward the engines of war, strikes on facilities at Shahid Beheshti University strike not at innocent learning, but at the regime’s own ruthless decision to militarise the academy. The April 3 strike on the university’s Laser and Plasma Research Institute targeted a node long flagged in sanctions and proliferation reporting as part of Iran’s military-relevant nuclear research base. Although open sources do not prove formal subordination to the regime’s weaponisation ecosystem, the overlap of sanctioned infrastructure, dual-use research, and personnel tied to that ecosystem leaves no doubt the site served as a scientific-military enabler.

The regime chooses its infrastructure with the same cold calculation. Steel complexes at Mobarakeh and Khuzestan form vital chokepoints that feed materials straight into missile casings and drone airframes. Fuel depots permit sharper, more discriminating pressure than sweeping assaults on power stations, which risk widespread yet reversible blackouts that weigh heavily on civilian spirits—while many regime strongholds simply switch to backup diesel generators. Reckless blows against the electrical grid would crush the hopes of the very citizens who now cheer these targeted strikes and drive them to doubt whether Trump and Netanyahu truly stand with them in the struggle to cast off their oppressors. History and bitter experience confirm that simply hitting generators or broad power plants fails to deliver decisive results; such strikes prove reversible, psychologically burdensome, and ultimately counterproductive when the goal is to sustain civilian support.

The regime adapts with relentless speed and raises the stakes for every strike. Senior government meetings and high-ranking state and IRGC sessions now convene in hospital basements. Checkpoints wind beneath bridges and into civilian tunnels. Ammunition piles up inside schools and apartment blocks across Tehran and beyond. Repressive units park motorcycles amid playgrounds and stash weapons and gear within residential buildings. These cynical manoeuvres transform everyday civilian spaces into living shields. The IRGC even disguises missile launchers as ordinary civilian trucks and trailers, a tactic analysts long warned would turn legitimate civilian transport into legitimate targets once war begins. In the coming three weeks, special forces may well prove essential to root out these embedded elements from populated zones and restore the precision that air power alone can no longer guarantee—lest the forces choking Iran’s people escape justice.

The regime’s reply comes as no surprise: its chieftains pledge fiercer crackdowns, denser checkpoints, and deadly force against all who dare celebrate the strikes or whisper dissent once the operations ebb. This wave of vengeance may yet merge with Iraqi proxy militias and the chemical agents the regime has already tested—turned once more against the youth who could ignite the final revolt. More than two dozen top architects of repression and proxy warfare still walk free, even as President Trump holds open the door to talks with factions of this same leadership.

No honest appraisal can ignore the stern limits of air power. Strikes may shatter production lines and fracture command chains, yet they rarely succeed in uprooting deeply entrenched machines of control on their own. Today the IRGC rules the Islamic Republic outright and maintains a symbiotic relationship with the Friday prayer imams who stir ideological fire while the Guards command the apparatus of intelligence and terror. The regime forged that machinery under Qassem Soleimani. It hardened the apparatus through the convulsions of 2018 and 2019 and redoubled its grip after the recent 12-day war with Israel. Its leaders have drawn a bleak conclusion: in any grave external assault, survival demands an ISIS-like creed—sacrificing the nation’s wealth as fuel for endurance, clinging to power through illicit petrochemical sales, and coldly converting schools, hospitals, and mosques into human shields for protection and resupply. The clerical-military edifice stands engineered to endure distant strikes; air power alone appears unlikely to bring it down.

History provides a relevant, if imperfect, frame. In Nazi-occupied Europe—across France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Norway—Allied strikes imposed hardship on civilian populations. These societies contained significant collaborator elements, yet large portions of the population endured such costs because they identified the occupying power as the principal source of oppression. The analogy does not map perfectly onto present conditions; it clarifies a central dynamic: external pressure can align with internal sentiment when a regime loses its claim to represent the nation. Recent heavy US airstrikes on Hashd al-Shaabicolumns at the Shalamcheh border crossing confirm the pattern: entire battalions of Iraqi proxies, already inside Iranian customs zones and awaiting clearance, suffered devastating explosions while attempting to reinforce the regime’s repressive machine. The current outpouring of Iranian gratitude stands out for its clarity and courage; it imposes a sacred duty to strike with the precision that honours this trust and avoids any needless shadow on the cause of liberty.

By its reckless actions and heavy reliance on foreign proxies, the Islamic Republic has already invited the decisive intervention now underway by Israel and the United States on both domestic and international fronts. The allies press forward in this ongoing campaign. Should momentum falter, the regime may survive in a weakened, hollowed-out form — a theocratic shell that operates much like the ISIS caliphate in its final days: sustained by illicit petrochemical sales and extortion, while ruthlessly exploiting civilian sites as human shields and treating national resources as expendable fuel for its own perpetuation. Such a remnant would endanger regional stability. It would threaten energy security through the Strait of Hormuz. It would undermine President Trump’s repeated assurances that help is on the way for the Iranian people’s liberation. And it would imperil the preservation and expansion of the Abraham Accords.

History and hard experience—from other cases in the region and beyond—demonstrate that the only viable course is sustained, precise pressure on the regime’s dual-use infrastructure and proxy networks. Broad, indiscriminate attacks on electrical grids or power plants have repeatedly proven insufficient and often counterproductive; they risk alienating the very population whose confidence history shows must remain intact if the regime is ever to fall. A key measure of risk mitigation lies in keeping the native Iranian population firmly on board. The regime, sensing its grip slipping, now exhibits features of a system that sustains itself in a manner comparable to late-stage insurgent entities. It relies on illicit resource flows, uses civilian infrastructure as cover, and depends on foreign proxy forces. This hollowed yet resilient structure resembles, in operational terms, the final phases of ISIS control, where survival overrides governance and civilian life becomes instrumentalised as protection. The regime stands ready to turn the country into scorched earth—sacrificing national resources and civilian infrastructure—to tighten its hold. If checkpoints, urban choke points, proxy formations, and the remaining senior IRGC command structure continue to function, they will retain the capacity to suppress any renewed anti-regime mobilisation. Only when the regime has significantly degraded or neutralised these instruments of control can the balance between state power and societal action shift meaningfully. The Iranian people themselves, who have largely welcomed these measured strikes, hold the ultimate power to shape their nation’s future. Decades of half-measures have sustained this system. Only sustained clarity and disciplined resolve that preserves their confidence can open a realistic path to genuine change.

What we are more likely to see instead are continued displays of power intended to shape the terms of any eventual agreement.

For now, negotiations speak the language of war more than diplomacy. When Washington talks about “progress” or “flexibility,” it is not simply describing talks; it is projecting the idea that military pressure is forcing Iran toward an American framework for ending the conflict.

Tehran’s denial of negotiations serves a similar purpose. Rejecting reports of talks helps prevent any existing contacts from being interpreted as evidence of weakness or submission.

Nor will the outcome depend only on Washington and Tehran. Regional actors will seek a role in shaping any settlement, and any country or coalition attempting to reopen the Strait of Hormuz will attach its own demands to the process.

Washington’s rhetoric reflects this struggle over narrative as much as over territory. In the second week of the war, the US defense secretary said that “at every stage, the conditions of the war will be determined by us.” Similar language echoes in Donald Trump’s repeated threats to send Iran “back to the Stone Age.”

Yet military power becomes a real victory only when it can be translated into a political settlement. When US officials speak about “progress in negotiations,” they are attempting to move from delivering blows to defining the outcome.

The very need to emphasize negotiations suggests that this transition remains incomplete. If battlefield superiority had already produced a decisive political result, Washington would have little reason to stress mediation and contacts.

The rhetoric also serves audiences beyond Tehran: financial markets, domestic politics, and allies trying to assess the war’s trajectory.

Israeli objectives further complicate the picture. US officials have acknowledged that Washington’s goals differ from those of Israel, which appears more focused on weakening Iran’s leadership.

Tehran’s definition of victory is also different. For the Islamic Republic, success means preserving the regime while reshaping the balance of power in the Strait of Hormuz.

Admitting negotiations under intense military pressure and under Washington’s conditions would risk appearing politically subordinate. Denial therefore becomes part of the struggle over legitimacy.

At the same time, Iran’s leadership—its military weakened and many senior figures killed—also needs a way out of the conflict. It must keep communication channels open while ensuring those contacts cannot be portrayed as retreat.

Iran’s strategy is therefore less about proving it has won than about preventing the United States from presenting its victory as complete. Tehran may not be able to claim triumph outright, but it seeks to ensure Washington cannot dictate the outcome alone.

Trump’s push for negotiations may also serve another purpose: testing where real power lies inside Iran. Every reported contact, denial, or proposed channel becomes a way of probing who still has the authority to make decisions.

Reports of fractures inside Iran’s leadership since the war began suggest uncertainty over that question. In wartime conditions, however, the Revolutionary Guards appear to hold the strongest position within the system.

Meanwhile, mediators are beginning to shape the diplomatic landscape. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan recently suggested that neither Washington’s nor Tehran’s demands will remain at their current levels, and that the task of mediators is to bring those positions closer to political reality.

But mediators are not neutral actors. Any settlement will also reflect their own interests in the region’s future energy and security order.

These states are caught between two fears: they do not want the Gulf to become a permanent instrument of Iranian pressure, yet they are also wary of confronting Tehran alone if Washington eventually disengages.

For now, mediation reflects less a drive for peace than a shared effort to contain instability.

Diplomacy has become another arena in the struggle to shape the balance of power emerging from the battlefield. As long as both Washington and Tehran continue to claim the upper hand, escalation remains more likely than compromise.

For now, what passes for diplomacy is the management of collapse, not the architecture of peace.

A series of recent economic measures taken by the UAE following Iranian attacks on Emirati infrastructure has exposed how deeply Iran’s external trade depends on Dubai’s role as a financial and logistical gateway.

The steps—ranging from restrictions on Iranian nationals to disruptions in financial and trade channels—highlight both the extent of interdependence between the two economies and the vulnerabilities that accompany it.

Iran’s consulate in Dubai confirmed that more than 1,200 Iranians were repatriated through indirect routes via Armenia and Afghanistan after direct travel links were suspended.

More consequential than these immediate measures, however, is the disruption of bilateral trade flows. The UAE is Iran’s second-largest trading partner after China and serves as a critical gateway for imports.

No container ships have been seen crossing from Emirati ports to Iran since the start of the conflict, according to Rebecca Gerdes, an analyst at data company Kpler.

According to official data, Emirati exports to Iran rose from about $5.2 billion in 2018—when the United States withdrew from the nuclear deal—to roughly $23 billion in recent years, accounting for more than one-third of Iran’s total imports.

Iran’s non-oil exports to the UAE have also grown, rising from $5.7 billion to nearly $8 billion.

Data from Kpler, seen by Iran International, indicates that Iran exports about 160,000 barrels per day of fuel oil (mazut) to the UAE, along with smaller volumes of other petroleum products such as LPG.

Services trade constitutes another vital channel. Iran imports roughly $23 billion in services annually—including logistics, engineering, insurance and trade facilitation—of which the UAE accounts for about 22 percent.

A substantial portion of this economic relationship also operates outside formal channels. Iran is estimated to import more than $20 billion worth of smuggled goods each year, much of it routed through the UAE.

Dubai has also served as a key node for currency exchange networks, document falsification related to oil shipments and other mechanisms used to circumvent international sanctions. Iranian exchange houses have played a central role in facilitating these activities.

Recent reports suggest that dozens of exchange operators with alleged links to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have been detained in the UAE as tensions escalated. While the full scope of these actions remains unclear, they point to a broader effort by Emirati authorities to tighten enforcement and limit illicit financial flows.

Iran’s recent military actions have targeted multiple locations in the UAE, including Fujairah—the country’s only oil export terminal outside the Strait of Hormuz—raising concerns about energy security and trade continuity.

A recent Goldman Sachs report warned that a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz could reduce the UAE’s GDP by as much as 6 percent in April alone, underscoring the broader regional economic risks posed by the conflict.

Yet the same dynamics also expose Iran’s vulnerabilities. The UAE’s role as a commercial, financial and logistical hub makes it difficult to replace in the short term.

Few countries possess the infrastructure, geographic proximity and established trade networks required to replicate Dubai’s function in Iran’s economic ecosystem.

Whether the UAE’s response becomes a decisive pressure point for Iran will depend on both the duration and the breadth of the restrictions.

In the short term, disruptions to trade, finance and logistics are likely to raise costs and complicate supply chains for Iranian importers. Over the longer term, sustained constraints could push Tehran to diversify routes and partners, though replacing the UAE’s role would be neither quick nor straightforward.

For now, the trajectory of tensions suggests that friction with the UAE may emerge as one of the most consequential external challenges to Iran’s trade architecture long after the current conflict subsides.

Jafari, a fifth-grade student, was killed at a military checkpoint in Tehran during US and Israeli airstrikes targeting military sites, according to Hengaw, a Norway-based Kurdish human rights organization that monitors abuses in Iran.

In an interview with the state-affiliated Hamshahri newspaper, the boy’s mother said that because of a “shortage of personnel,” his father had taken him to the checkpoint. He was later killed in a drone strike while stationed there.

The Basij Organization confirmed that the 11-year-old died “while on duty” at a checkpoint on Artesh Highway as a result of the strike.

Why he was sent remains difficult to verify. In Iran’s tightly controlled information environment, families often speak under pressure, with state scrutiny and the threat of reprisals limiting candor.

The case comes as officials with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have openly acknowledged lowering the minimum age for war-related support roles to 12.

Rahim Nadali, a cultural official with the Guards in Tehran, said in remarks aired on state media that an initiative called For Iran was recruiting participants for patrols, checkpoints and logistics.

“Given that the age of those coming forward has dropped and they are asking to take part, we lowered the minimum age to 12,” he said, adding that 12- and 13-year-olds could now take part if they wished.

The state-backed recruitment drive makes Jafari’s death more than an isolated case. Together with precedent from the Iran-Iraq war, it suggests children even younger than the officially stated minimum may also be drawn into the war effort.

For rights advocates, the case reveals both a propaganda strategy and a manpower crisis inside a weakened state.

“They want to recruit these young people, use them as a kind of human shield. Because if they attack these kids, they start saying, ‘Oh look, they attack kids,’ and that’s what they’re doing,” said Shiva Mahbobi, a former political prisoner and London-based human rights advocate.

The child was placed at a military checkpoint even as the regime knew such sites were active targets of Israeli strikes, underscoring the degree to which minors were knowingly exposed to lethal risk.

Analysts say the reliance on minors also points to deeper strain within the regime’s security structure. After months of domestic unrest, wartime losses and reported cracks within some IRGC ranks, including defections, the state appears increasingly short on trusted personnel for checkpoint and support roles.

“They have actually called upon younger people to come and tried to recruit them. It shows they are preparing for a battle where they know they will need many more forces,” Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam of the Norway-based Iran Human Rights organization told Iran International.

“It also shows they are not in a good condition. They are struggling for their survival.”

“They have only one principle, which is holy to them, and that’s to preserve the establishment," he added.

Through his human rights organization, Amiry-Moghaddam has documented cases from the January crackdown in which the regime placed weapons in the hands of minors and sent them to fire on protesters, exploiting the hesitation many civilians feel when confronted by a child.

A holy pledge: preserve the regime

The use of children in conflict, rights groups say, is not new. It reflects a longer doctrine in which vulnerable lives are used to offset military weakness and preserve the state.

“The Islamic Republic used a large number of child soldiers during the war with Iraq. They also sent Afghan children to fight in Syria,” said Shahin Milani, executive director of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center.

“Given the pressure they are under, it is not surprising that they have resorted to using minors to man checkpoints. Perhaps they want to keep their trained fighters for more critical roles. Since it came to power in 1979, the Islamic Republic has relied on sacrificing its soldiers to compensate for technological inferiority.”

That logic, rights defenders argue, crosses from military expediency into deliberate political calculation.

“Hiding behind children is not new. The Islamic Republic used children in the war with Iraq as well, brainwashing them with propaganda and giving them keys to heaven," said Roya Boroumand, co-founder and executive director of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center.

The move comes despite Iran’s obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the use of children in military activities. Iran signed the treaty on September 5, 1991 and ratified it on July 13, 1994.

For Boroumand, the use of minors reflects a governing doctrine in which human life is subordinated to state survival.

“They are disposable and instruments for a higher purpose. In this case, the loss of children’s lives increases the political cost of war for their enemies. So rather than protecting and evacuating them to safe shelters, they deliberately expose them to danger,” she said.

So far, UNICEF has not publicly condemned the Islamic Republic’s stated policy of recruiting children into war-related support roles. Iran International has reached out to UNICEF’s communications team for comment.