Mr. Trump has threatened repeatedly to bombard critical Iranian infrastructure unless Iranian forces meet his deadlines to end their de facto blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, which is a conduit for a significant portion of the world’s crude oil and natural gas.

But he has also postponed that threat several times, most recently on Sunday, when he pushed back the deadline by a day, to Tuesday evening in the United States.

Iran has refused to back down, firing repeated volleys of ballistic missiles at its neighbors and snarling global shipping.

“If attacks on civilian targets are repeated, the subsequent phases of our offensive and retaliatory operations will be carried out much more crushingly and extensively,” Ebrahim Zolfaghari, an Iranian military spokesman, said on Monday.

Strikes on power plants could affect millions of civilians across Iran, in what many legal experts argue could be considered war crimes under international law. Such attacks could also add to worries about the global economy, which has been rattled by soaring energy prices since the war began in late February. Oil prices rose slightly during Asia’s business day on Monday before falling on reports of progress in indirect talks between Iran and the United States.

The impasse has left Mr. Trump contemplating extreme options for the next steps, including a ground invasion of islands in the Persian Gulf. Mediators in Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey have sought to broker a deal to end the crisis, to little avail. While Mr. Trump has postponed threatened attacks before, analysts say repeatedly doing so without tangible progress toward peace would risk eroding his credibility.

Mr. Trump, seemingly emboldened by the U.S. rescue of an American airman in Iran over the weekend, told Fox News on Sunday that he believed he could reach a deal with Iran by Monday. But he also said he was “considering blowing everything up” and taking control of the country’s oil if Iran did not cooperate.

In an expletive-laden social media post, Mr. Trump told Iranian leaders to “open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards,” or else the attacks on infrastructure would commence.

Here’s what else we’re covering:

• Rescued airmen: The two U.S. airmen who were rescued after being shot down over Iran were receiving care at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a military hospital in Germany, a U.S. military official said on Monday.

• Attacks across the Middle East: Israel said it had bombed a major Iranian petrochemical complex on Monday, just days after it struck a similar site — part of an avowed goal to destroy factories that fill Iran’s coffers. Israeli paramedics retrieved the bodies of four people killed by an Iranian missile strike in Haifa, according to the Israeli authorities.

• Warning from oil nations: Eight members of the consortium of influential oil producing nations known as OPEC Plus on Sunday expressed concern about the toll the war was taking on global oil supplies and energy infrastructure in the region. “Restoring damaged energy assets to full capacity is both costly and takes a long time,” the group said in a statement warning of a slow recovery after the war. Read more ›

• Death tolls: The Human Rights Activists News Agency said at least 1,606 civilians, including 244 children, had been killed in Iran as of Friday. Lebanon’s health ministry on Thursday said at least 1,345 Lebanese had been killed since the latest fighting between Israel and Hezbollah began. In attacks blamed on Iran, at least 50 people have been killed in Gulf nations. In Israel, at least 20 people had been killed as of Monday. The American death toll stands at 13 service members, with hundreds of others wounded.

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https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04/06/world/iran-war-trump-israel