By Nandita Bose and Steve Holland
WASHINGTON, April 6 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he will order sweeping attacks on Iranian civilian power plants and bridges on Tuesday night unless Tehran makes a deal aimed at ending the five-week war with Iran.
Trump’s vow at a White House press conference came ahead of the 8 p.m. EDT deadline on Tuesday (0000 GMT Wednesday) that he set for Iran to comply with U.S. conditions.
Trump is demanding Iran forswear nuclear weapons and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a critical oil transit waterway. He said: “The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night.”
“I hope I don’t have to do it,” Trump said.
He said the U.S. has a plan “where every bridge in Iran will be decimated” by midnight EDT (0400 GMT) Wednesday and “where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again.”
“I mean, complete demolition – by 12 o’clock, and it’ll happen over a period of four hours if we want it to. We don’t want that to happen,” he said.
Critics have said Trump would be committing war crimes if the U.S. attacks civilian power plants, a point Trump dismissed on Monday.”I’m not worried about it. You know what’s a war crime? Having a nuclear weapon,” Trump said earlier on Monday during an Easter egg event for children on the White House South Lawn.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth told the press conference that the heaviest strikes since the start of the Iran conflict would take place on Monday and warned that Tuesday would have even more.
Speaking to reporters earlier at the Easter event, Trump said a proposal offered by Iran was inadequate.
“They made a proposal, and it’s a significant proposal. It’s a significant step. It’s not good enough,” Trump said.
He said the war could end quickly if Iran does “what they have to do.”
“They have to do certain things. They know that, they’ve been negotiating I think in good faith,” he said.
Trump said, without providing evidence, that the U.S. has “numerous intercepts” from Iranian civilians urging it not to let up in trying to dislodge the Iranian government from power.
“They would be willing to suffer that in order to have freedom,” Trump said.
RESCUE OPERATION
Trump, joined by Hegseth and other top national security advisers, cast the recovery of a downed American airman as a symbol of U.S. strength and resolve. He described in detail the weekend operation to save the airman, who hid in mountainous Iranian terrain and eluded capture by Iranian forces.
Trump said the airman, identified only as “Dude 44 Bravo,” kept climbing higher in order to improve his chances for recovery. He said the airman was seen moving via an unidentified U.S. camera link. “It was like finding a needle in a haystack,” Trump said.
Hundreds of American forces were involved in the search-and-recovery mission and to prevent the Iranians from finding him first, he said.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who joined Trump at the event, said the agency had engaged in a “deception campaign” to convince the Iranians the airman was somewhere else.
Ratcliffe said that on Saturday morning the CIA got confirmation that “one of America’s best and bravest was alive and concealed in a mountain crevice, still invisible to the enemy, but not to the CIA.”
The pilot, shot down on Friday, was recovered on Sunday morning.
“In a breathtaking show of skill and precision, lethality and force, America’s military descended on the area, the real area, engaged the enemy, rescued the stranded officer, destroyed all threats and exited Iranian territory while taking no casualties of any kind,” Trump said.
Hegseth said the lost airman used an emergency transponder to show where he was and his first message was: “God is good.”
General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the recovered airman had been the “back seater” on the downed aircraft.
“In this case, the back seater’s absolute commitment to surviving made much of our efforts possible,” Caine said.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Steve Holland; Editing by David Ljunggren, Michelle Nichols, Deepa Babington and Cynthia Osterman)
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