WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — At war with Iran, President Donald Trump is cycling through an increasingly desperate list of options as he searches for a solution to the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. He has jumped from calls to secure the waterway through diplomatic means to lifting sanctions and now escalating to a direct threat against civilian infrastructure in the Islamic Republic.
Trump and his allies insist they were always prepared for Iran to block the strait, yet the Republican president’s erratic strategy has fueled criticism that he is grasping for answers after going to war without a clear exit plan. On Saturday came his latest attempt, via an ultimatum to Iran: Open the strait within 48 hours or the United States will “obliterate” the country’s power plants.
Trump’s aides defended the threat as a hard-edged tactic to press Iran into submission. Opponents framed it as the failure of a president who miscalculated what it would take to get out of a geopolitical mire.
“Trump has no plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, so he is threatening to attack Iran’s civil power plants,” said Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass, adding: “This would be a war crime.”
“He’s lost control of the war and he is panicking,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., responding to Trump’s post.
Over the course of about a week, Trump has repeatedly shifted his approach on the crucial waterway for global oil and gas transport. There is growing urgency for Trump as soaring oil prices rattle global markets and pinch American consumers months before pivotal midterm elections.
Trump and diplomacy
Trump tried his hand at a diplomatic solution last weekend when he called for a new international coalition to send warships to the strait.
Allies turned him down. Trump then said the U.S. could manage on its own. On Friday he suggested other countries would have to take over as the U.S. eyes an exit. Hours later he indicated the waterway would somehow “open itself.”
“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,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. told ABC’s “This Week.”
Trump’s Treasury Department on Friday made its latest attempt to get a handle on soaring gas prices, by lifting sanctions on some Iranian oil for the first time in decades. That relieved some of the pressure that Washington traditionally has used as leverage against Tehran.
The goal was to send millions more barrels of oil into the global market. It is not clear, however, how much of a dent that would make in lowering pump prices or how the administration could prevent Iran from cashing in on the renewed sales.
The administration earlier temporarily lifted sanctions on some Russian oil.
An ultimatum to Iran
Trump’s ultimatum, conveyed while he spent the weekend in Florida, carries a threat of remarkable aggression. His previous messaging mostly focused on U.S. success in hitting Iran’s air force, navy and missile production. This time, the threatened target is the energy infrastructure that powers hospitals, homes and more.
His social media post — 51 words, much of it in capital letters — did not have the appearance of a message that underwent the careful legal scrutiny needed to justify an attack on civilian infrastructure, said Geoffrey Corn, a law professor at Texas Tech University and a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army who served as a military lawyer.
“It certainly has a feeling of ready, fire, aim,” Corn said of Trump’s moving strategy.
“He overestimated his ability to control the events once he unleashed this torrent of violence.”
That type of widespread attack would probably be a war crime, Corn said. For military leaders, it could force a choice between obeying an order to carry out a war crime or refusing and facing criminal sanction for willful disobedience, he said.
Laws governing warfare do not explicitly forbid attacks on power plants, but the tactic is allowed only if an analysis finds that the military advantages outweigh the civilian harm, legal scholars say. It is seen as a high bar to clear because the rules of war are, at their core, designed to separate civilian and military targets.
Iran’s U.N. ambassador, in a letter to the Security Council, warned that the deliberate targeting of power plants would be inherently indiscriminate and a war crime, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
The White House has already faced intense backlash after the U.S. was blamed for a missile strike on an Iranian elementary school that killed more than 165 people.
Trump aides justify latest attempt to rein in the crisis
Trump provided scant detail on which plants might be targeted and how. He gave Iran until Monday to reopen the strait or else the U.S. will strike “various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!”
Trump’s team came to his defense Sunday, offering justification for striking Iran’s energy grid.
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. He said potential targets include “gas-fired thermal power plants and other types of plants.”
Speaking on Fox News, Waltz said he wanted to get ahead of “hand-wringing” from the global community, calling the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. “The president is not messing around,” he said.
NATO’s secretary-general, Mark Rutte, who has allied himself closely to Trump, tried to calm tensions. He said he understood Trump’s anger and stressed that more than 20 countries are “coming together to implement his vision” of making the strait navigable as soon as possible.
Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter, cautioned against an all-out attack like the one Trump threatened. “We want to leave everything in the country intact, so that the people who come after this regime are going to be able to rebuild and reconstitute,” he told CNN’s ”State of the Union.”
Trump’s threat could prove counterproductive: If it’s carried out, Iranian leaders said they would completely close the strait and retaliate against U.S. and Israeli infrastructure.
Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this report.
