Iran War Live Updates: Trump Escalates Threat to Hit Iranian Power Plants After U.S. Rescues Downed Airman

Tehran9:24 a.m. April 6 Tel Aviv8:54 a.m. April 6 Iran War Live Updates: Trump Escalates Threat to Hit Iranian Power Plants After U.S. Rescues Downed Airman President Trump used an expletive-laden social media post to taunt Iranian leaders, saying that the United States would attack if they did not fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz. - Social Media/UGC, via Reuters - Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times - Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, via Associated Press - Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times - Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times - David Guttenfelder/The New York Times - Reuters President Trump on Sunday escalated his threats to bomb Iranian power plants within the next two days and taunted the country’s leaders in an expletive-laden social media post. Mr. Trump, seemingly emboldened by the successful U.S. rescue of an American airman in Iran over the weekend, issued a new ultimatum to Iran to end its chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz, a major Persian Gulf waterway for the transport of oil and gas, by Monday. If Iran’s government did not, he said, U.S. forces would target the country’s energy infrastructure, which supplies power for millions of civilians. Mr. Trump made the point in a crudely worded social media post. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” Mr. Trump said. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH.” “Praise be to Allah,” he added. In response to Mr. Trump, Mizan, an outlet affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, said that “Iran’s steadfastness and resistance have driven Trump to the brink of madness.” Mizan also said he had insulted the Iranians with “vile” language. The president has previously postponed his deadline to attack twice. On Sunday, he told Fox News that he believed he could reach a deal with Iran by Monday, then turned back to threats, saying that if Iran did not make a deal, he was “considering blowing everything up” and taking control of its oil. The Omani foreign ministry said officials had discussed how to reopen the Strait of Hormuz with Iranian counterparts without reaching a definitive agreement. Iran has threatened to retaliate by intensifying its attacks on critical infrastructure in Israel and Arab states that are allied with the United States. An escalation could further derail the lives of civilians throughout the region and add to worries about the global economy, which has been rattled by soaring energy prices since the start of the war. Over the past two days, the U.S. military had been in a race with Iranian armed forces to find the missing airman after an F-15E jet was shot down over Iran on Friday. It was the first known instance of a U.S. combat aircraft being downed by enemy fire since the start of the war. The plane’s pilot was quickly rescued. But a second officer was stranded in Iran and injured in the incident. American commandoes found the airman deep inside Iranian territory under the cover of darkness. There were no U.S. casualties among the rescue team, Mr. Trump said on Sunday. The rescued officer had “sustained injuries, but he will be just fine,” Mr. Trump added. The incident underscored Iran’s ability to fight back despite weeks of attacks on its military arsenal. Another U.S. aircraft, an A-10 Warthog attack plane, crashed near the Strait of Hormuz at about the same time, and the lone pilot was rescued, two U.S. officials said. On Sunday, Israel and a number of Gulf countries reported attempted drone and missile strikes by Iran. Kuwaiti officials said Iranian drones significantly damaged two power and water desalination plants, and sparked a fire at the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation’s oil complex. Here’s what else we’re covering: Beirut strikes: Amid one of the heaviest days of Israeli bombardment of the Lebanese capital, a strike in a densely populated residential area next to one of Lebanon’s largest hospitals killed at least four people and wounded 40 others, according to Doctors Without Borders. The group, which is working alongside staff at the hospital, declared it a mass-casualty incident. Earlier Sunday, the Israeli military said it was attacking Hezbollah “infrastructure sites,” and it conducted multiple raids on targets in the city’s southern outskirts. Petrochemical factories hit: Israel on Saturday struck a petrochemical complex in Mahshahr, a sprawling industrial center in Iran’s southwest that plays a significant role in the country’s economy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said the targeted sites were part of a “money machine” that brought in revenues for the Iranian government. At least five people were killed and 170 others injured in the attack on the major oil industry hub, state media in Iran reported. Warning from oil nations: Eight members of the consortium of influential oil producing nations known as OPEC Plus expressed concern on Sunday 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 › The authorities in the United Arab Emirates said early Monday that a Ghanaian national suffered moderate injuries from falling debris in Musaffah, an industrial area in Abu Dhabi, after an air defence interception. In Fujairah, a building belonging to Du, a telecom company, was targeted by a drone reportedly launched from Iran, Emirati state media reported. Where aircraft wreckage was seen on Sunday after rescue operation Israel’s emergency service, Magen David Adom, reported injuries in several cities after missile strikes in the past hour. One woman suffered a serious chest injury from shrapnel in Petah Tikva, east of Tel Aviv. Two adults and two 5-year-old girls sustained mild injuries in Haifa, while a man suffered light injuries in Tel Aviv. At around the same time, the Israeli military said it was intercepting missiles launched from Iran, but did not say which areas the strikes were targeting. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi of Japan, who is facing public pressure to stave off an energy crisis, told Parliament that she would seek talks with the Iranian government, perhaps as soon as Wednesday. “The important thing is to ensure the safety of navigation for all vessels, including Japanese ships, in the Strait of Hormuz,” she said Monday. Japan imports about 95 percent of its oil from the Middle East. A recent poll by Kyodo News found that 90 percent of Japanese say they are worried about the war’s impact on daily life. The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait said early Monday that they were responding to missile and drone threats. The Kuwaiti Army said that explosions were the result of air defense systems intercepting attacks. Neither country specified the source of the threats. Multiple reports in Iranian state media said Israel struck Iran’s elite Sharif University of Technology, a magnet for Iran’s brightest minds and a recruiting ground for top American universities. Iranian media posted photographs of destruction inside the campus, with debris and rubble covering the ground and the street outside. The attack on Sharif followed a wave of Israeli strikes on Iranian universities over the past week in Tehran and Isfahan. The structure providing gas to the university was also attacked, Tehran’s municipality told state media. Gas was cut off for the neighborhood surrounding the campus, and streets in the Azadi area in central Tehran were blocked, according to the reports. Hassan Badavam, a resident of the area, said in a text message that he woke up from the enormous sound of the explosion and ran outside, as did many of his neighbors. President Trump escalated his threats against Iran on Sunday, warning in an expletive-laden social media post that U.S. forces would strike the country’s power plants and bridges if Tehran did not fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz by Monday. The threat came after the U.S. military on Saturday successfully rescued an injured American airman who had been stranded in Iran after his fighter jet was shot down on Friday, the first known instance of a U.S. combat aircraft being downed by enemy fire since the war began. On Sunday, Mr. Trump announced on social media that U.S. Special Forces, aided by a C.I.A. deception campaign, had extracted the airman from deep inside Iran. There were no U.S. casualties in the rescue, Mr. Trump said. Here’s what else happened: Iran: The Iranian Red Crescent Society said one of its ambulances was hit in an airstrike during an emergency mission in Fars Province. The organization also said that 46 of its ambulances had been damaged during the war and that four of its aid workers had been killed. Israel: Missile fire hit a residential building in Haifa, an Israeli military spokesman said. The attack seriously injured one person, and three others sustained light injuries, according to the Israel Fire and Rescue Authority. The Israeli military said early on Sunday that it had struck more than 120 targets in central and western Iran over the previous 24 hours, including ballistic missile sites, drone production and launch sites, and air defense systems. Lebanon: A strike in Beirut hit a densely populated residential area near one of Lebanon’s largest hospitals, killing at least four people and wounding 40 others, according to Doctors Without Borders. Earlier on Sunday, the Israeli military said it was targeting Hezbollah “infrastructure sites,” and warplanes conducted raids on Beirut’s southern outskirts. Israel’s military said Hezbollah rocket fire had landed in or near U.N. peacekeeping positions in southern Lebanon around 165 times since early March. Strait of Hormuz: Mr. Trump, in the social media post, demanded that Iran reopen the waterway by Monday or face attacks on civilian infrastructure. Omani and Iranian officials held talks on making transit easier but announced no agreement. An Iranian adviser also warned that Tehran could target Bab al-Mandab, another crucial shipping route at the southern end of the Red Sea. Gulf States: Iranian drones in Kuwait damaged two power and water desalination plants and started a fire at the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation’s oil complex, the country’s officials said. The Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company in Bahrain said a drone attack started fires at its facilities, and the United Arab Emirates reported that fires resulted from falling debris at an Abu Dhabi petrochemical plant after the country’s air defenses intercepted an attack. Global economy: Eight OPEC Plus member nations warned on Sunday that the war was taking a growing toll on global oil supplies and energy infrastructure, saying that restoring damaged facilities would be costly and slow. The group announced an increase in production quotas for next month, which was a mostly symbolic move as shipping constraints in the Strait of Hormuz continue to choke exports. The oil and financial futures markets had initially muted reactions on Sunday to the weekend developments in the war in Iran. The price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose to about $111 on Sunday, up roughly $2. Futures on the S&P 500 index dipped about 0.6 percent. News Analysis After celebrating the remarkable rescue of an injured American weapons officer from his mountain hide-out in Iran, President Trump might have taken the hair-raising episode as a warning about the risks of expanding the war, especially as he considers possible ground operations inside Iranian territory. After all, had Iranian forces found the officer, an Air Force colonel, before the C.I.A. and American special operators located and extracted him, the president could have easily found himself in the kind of hostage situation that, he often notes, ended Jimmy Carter’s presidency. But Mr. Trump appears emboldened by the rescue, as least based on the obscenity-laced message he sent on Sunday via social media to an Iranian leadership that has refused to negotiate on his terms. Angry and frustrated, he appears on the cusp of another escalation, this time to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, where ship traffic was flowing normally before the American and Israeli attack began. Iran has discovered that this is its most potent bargaining chip. Mr. Trump has now renewed his threat to bomb the country, and its surviving leaders, into submission, even if that means taking out the bridges and power grids that ordinary Iranians — including the current government’s fiercest opponents — depend upon for everyday life. And even, it seems, if such attacks raise the question of whether the United States would be violating the Geneva Conventions’ prohibition on targeting civilian sites. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” the president wrote on Sunday morning, as much of the country was preparing for Easter celebrations. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.” Mr. Trump has never shied away from threats and occasional vulgar language on social media, but this post would have stood out on any day, much less on what most Christians consider the holiest day of the year. It was notable for not only its language, but also its somewhat desperate-sounding tone. Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said on social media that Mr. Trump’s comments were “completely, utterly unhinged.” “He’s already killed thousands,” Mr. Murphy wrote. “He’s going to kill thousands more.” Representative Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican who is retiring from Congress, said in a text message that “Americans don’t want their president to be profane and vulgar.” He added, “Part of leadership is self-control.” Obscenities and ultimatums aside, this was only the most recent example of how Mr. Trump has swerved from braggadocio about the power of America’s military to force Iran into “unilateral surrender,” to threats about new strikes against civilian targets if they did not. In early March, a little more than a week into the war, he said the unilateral surrender would come soon, either when “they cry uncle, or when they can’t fight any longer.” If Iran didn’t make the declaration, the White House press secretary said, he would do it for them. On March 26, Mr. Trump told his cabinet, in a meeting that was streamed live, that Iranian leaders were “begging” for a deal — the first of his many suggestions that there was a secret, back-channel negotiation underway, facilitated by Pakistan or Turkey or, most recently, Egypt. Last week, he insisted that Iran’s new leaders, presumably including its new supreme leader, were “much more reasonable” than their recently deceased predecessors. There was talk of a meeting, likely in Islamabad, Pakistan, between Vice President JD Vance and the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. That meeting has yet to happen. Perhaps it still will and Mr. Trump’s theory will prove correct: that Iran may hold fast to its reputation for resistance, but only until the pressure grows unbearable. Some former American military officials say Mr. Trump’s approach may yet work. “We know from history that leadership in Iran responds when existential pressure is applied to the regime,” Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the retired head of U.S. Central Command, which is leading the American war effort, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “Even if your ultimate aim is not regime change, getting the regime in Tehran to a place where they’ll make a deal that’s to our liking is going to be the inevitable byproduct of intolerable pressure.” Of course, building that kind of pressure takes time — far more time than the two or three weeks of heavy attacks that Mr. Trump assured the nation on Wednesday night would hasten the war’s completion. And as Mr. Trump pushes out the deadline, he amasses more risk. The Iranians know this, and they realize they do not need to win; they just need to survive and drag out the process. While Mr. Trump still suggests that Iran is begging for a deal, intelligence analysis generated by the United States and some of its closest Western allies suggests the opposite, according to officials who have talked to The New York Times. Although they differ on some details, most conclude that while Iran’s competing power centers are in disarray, its new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is likely to take a harder line on negotiating with the United States than his father and predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, did before he was killed in the first attack of the war. They also assess that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is likely to gain authority in the face of an existential threat to the country — and may be more tempted than ever to race for a nuclear weapon, if it can. The loss of at least four American aircraft in recent days — two shot down, two blown up by American forces when they got stuck in the sand during the rescue operation — is a reminder that once a battle begins inside enemy territory, Mr. Trump’s ability to control events melts away. Accidents happen. Machinery gets stuck. Aircrews eject. With more time comes more risk. So far, Mr. Trump has not publicly reconciled his short deadlines for departure with the long timelines needed for success. He may be able to open the Strait of Hormuz by force, but keeping it open would require a continuous presence of months or years, likely with regular raids on the Iranian side of the strait to wipe out drone and missile threats to the slow-moving tankers. Mr. Trump has suggested that keeping the strait open will be the responsibility of an international force, with a bit of American support. But few other powers seem eager to join, even those, like China, that get a substantial share of their oil through the strait. The Europeans are enraged that Mr. Trump started the war without consulting them, and now demands their help. It was not by accident that when roughly 40 nations met last week in Paris to discuss how to reopen the strait, the United States was excluded. Similar risks go with seizing Kharg Island, the hub of Iranian oil exports in the northern Persian Gulf. Taking it would be fairly easy, Mr. Trump said last week. Fox News reported that Mr. Trump told the network on Sunday, “If they don’t make a deal and fast, I’m considering blowing everything up and taking over the oil.” Again, he has never explained how he would hold the island or the oil production facilities, which the Iranian military views as its lifeblood — and knows how to sabotage. And then there is the riskiest operation of all: the seizure of 970 pounds of near-bomb-grade uranium from a deep underground storage site in Isfahan, not far from where the airman was rescued on Sunday. Military officials have said the risk of casualties in that operation is high. Would Mr. Trump take that kind of risk? Not in his first term, say his former national security aides. But something has changed the second time around. After more than five years in the Oval Office, his confidence in his own judgment — “my gut,” as he likes to say — has built with time. He has assembled a team of close advisers who are far less likely to push back than those who counseled him the first time around. And the success of Operation Midnight Hammer, the June 2025 bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites, and then the seizure of the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro from his well-protected bedroom in Caracas have given Mr. Trump a sense that the U.S. military can help him bend the world to his will. So much so that Mr. Trump, according to his special envoy Steve Witkoff, was “curious” back when the war started in February about why Iran had not just given in. “I don’t want to use the world ‘capitulated,’” he said, “but why they haven’t capitulated?” Thirty-five days into the war, Mr. Trump’s outbursts suggest he is still asking the same question. In the last 24 hours, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activist News Agency has recorded at least 168 attacks in 11 provinces of Iran, resulting in at least seven people killed or injured, both civilian and military. At least 1,616 civilians have been killed in Iran since the war’s start, the organization said. It also documented renewed attacks on petrochemical complexes in the Mahshahr region, as well as heavy clashes in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province. Amid one of the heaviest days of Israeli bombardment in Beirut, a strike in a densely populated residential area next to one of Lebanon’s largest hospitals killed at least four people and wounded 40 others, according to Doctors Without Borders. The group, which is working alongside staff at the hospital, declared it a mass-casualty incident. The organization in a statement condemned “this attack on civilians in a highly populated area and calls for the protection of civilians and health facilities.” As the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran pushed into its sixth week with the rescue of a downed American airman and fresh threats from President Trump, Democrats and Republicans on Sunday renewed their debate over the conflict. Democrats have accused Mr. Trump of plunging America into a perilous, open-ended conflict with no plan to bring it to an end or to mitigate its economic costs, which have included surging gasoline prices. Polls have shown most of the public opposes the war. Mr. Trump and other Republicans have defended the conflict, saying that the United States is standing up to a dangerous adversary. They argue that Iran’s nuclear program posed a severe threat that the president had little choice but to confront. Here’s a look at how the political debate played out on the 37th day of the war. A top Democrat said the president had no plan. Democrats on Sunday celebrated the mission that rescued an Air Force officer whose fighter jet had been shot down in Iran. But they continued to press their case that the president had failed to outline clear objectives, a concrete exit strategy or a satisfactory explanation for rising fuel costs. “Donald Trump has gotten us involved in this reckless war of choice without any plan,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top House Democrat, told ABC News. “Billions of dollars are being spent every day to drop bombs in the Middle East,” Mr. Jeffries added, “when Donald Trump, as a candidate, promised to never get us involved in this type of conflict.” A swing-district Republican called the war an ‘incredible operation.’ While most members of the Republican Party support the war, according to opinion polls, the conflict’s unpopularity with Americans overall could pose a challenge for Republicans running in swing districts in the midterms. One of those Republicans, Representative Mike Lawler of New York, told NBC News in an interview on Sunday that Congress would “need to take necessary action” if the war lasted more than 90 days. But he strongly defended the president’s handling of the war. “The idea that the administration and our armed forces are not meeting their objectives or that there wasn’t a plan is absurd,” Mr. Lawler said. “The fact is that they have conducted an incredible operation over these last five weeks.” An expletive-laden post by Trump drew a bipartisan backlash. The president issued an threat to Iran on Sunday that prompted sharp criticism from leading Democrats and disapproving statements from a few Republicans. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH. Praise be to Allah.” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, said in a statement on social media that the president was “ranting like an unhinged madman.” Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, onetime Trump ally and forceful critic of the war, wrote on social media that the president’s behavior was “insane.” And Representative Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican who has backed the war effort, said in a text message that Americans didn’t “want their president to be profane and vulgar,” adding, “Part of leadership is self-control.” President Trump on Sunday issued a renewed ultimatum to Iran, threatening once again to bomb its critical energy infrastructure if it did not open the Strait of Hormuz, a major transit route for a fifth of the world’s oil and gas. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH.” “Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time!” he later added. It was far from the first time in the past two weeks that Mr. Trump has threatened Iran’s power plants, which tens of millions of Iranians rely on to power schools, hospitals, residences and other basic aspects of civilian life. Deliberate attacks on such civilian infrastructure are typically a violation of international humanitarian law, and in many cases can be considered war crimes. Here is a timeline of the previous deadlines Mr. Trump has issued to Iran over the Strait of Hormuz: March 21: In a post on social media, Mr. Trump declared that if Iran did not “FULLY OPEN” the strait within 48 hours, the United States would “obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!” Ali Mousavi, Iran’s permanent representative to the International Maritime Organization, said that the strait was “open to everyone” except his country’s enemies. Other Iranian officials warned that attacks on energy infrastructure would be a direct attack on the Iranian people and that Iran would retaliate in kind. March 23: Two days after he issued the first threat, Mr. Trump said that the United States had had “productive” conversations with Iran and that he had ordered the Pentagon to postpone any strikes on Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for five days. Iranian officials publicly denied that any talks were underway. March 26: As stocks on Wall Street tanked, Mr. Trump again postponed his deadline by 10 days, this time to April 6 at 8 p.m. Eastern time, saying that he was “pausing the period of Energy Plant destruction” at the Iranian government’s request. March 30: Mr. Trump claimed that “great progress” had been made in negotiations to end the war. At the same time, he threatened that if a deal was not reached and the Strait of Hormuz were not “immediately” opened, the United States would destroy all of Iran’s power plants and oil wells, as well as Kharg Island, Iran’s main hub for oil exports, and “possibly all” desalination plants. April 1: Mr. Trump said that Iran had asked for a cease-fire, a claim that Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson called “false and baseless,” according to IRIB, the Iranian state news agency. Mr. Trump wrote on social media that the United States would consider a cease-fire only when the strait was “open, free and clear.” He added: “Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!” April 4: Two days before his postponed deadline for Iran to open the strait, Mr. Trump said that “time is running out — 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them.” His post came after he made several conflicting statements about the strait in the preceding days, alternately attacking allies for not fighting to reopen it themselves and saying it would reopen naturally. The two crew members ejected from their fighter jet just seconds after it was hit by Iranian fire. The F-15E Strike Eagle, the first fighter jet lost to enemy fire in the war, crashed violently to the ground. The Air Force officers were deep in hostile territory on Friday morning, alone and armed only with pistols. The plane’s pilot was in “constant communication” with his unit and rescued about six hours later by a force that included attack planes and helicopters that came under heavy fire, military officials said. But the aircraft’s weapons systems officer was missing. In the chaos of the ejection — a violent, lifesaving maneuver — he had become separated from the pilot, setting off a vast search that became the primary focus for the U.S. military troops and C.I.A. officers across the entire theater for two days. This account of the weapons officer’s fight for survival and rescue is based on interviews with about a dozen current and former military and administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation. Surveillance planes and drones combed the area near where the plane had crashed but could not find the weapons officer or any signs that he was alive, a military official briefed on the rescue said. The military described him as “status unknown,” the official said. On the ground in Iran, the downed officer’s mission boiled down to two words: evasion and survival. Surrounded by potential enemies, he hiked up a 7,000-foot ridgeline and wedged himself into a crevice where he hoped he would be safe until American forces found him, U.S. military officials said. U.S. Central Command was preparing a statement that the plane had gone down and the pilot had been rescued. But just as they were about to release the statement — about 14 hours after the fighter jet was hit — U.S. officials got a lock on the weapons officer’s location via a beacon he was carrying. Air Force fighter pilots and weapons officers are equipped with beacons and secure communications devices for coordinating with their rescuers. But they are trained not to signal their location constantly and to restrict use of the beacon, which can be spotted by the enemy, military officials said. Central Command officials immediately scrapped the statement they were preparing to release. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called President Trump and told him that as long as there was a chance that they could find the weapons officer, they needed to keep information about the pilot’s rescue secret. Iran had launched several search parties, one of which had assembled at the base of the mountain where the weapons officer was hiding. For the Iranians, the downed Air Force colonel was a powerful asset they could use as leverage in high-stakes negotiations with the United States. For the U.S. military, which lives by the mantra of “no man left behind,” finding the downed officer was a moral imperative. Battered by the force from his ejection, the weapons officer waited. He knew that both U.S. and Iranian forces were racing to find him. A military official described the weapons officer’s signaling as intermittent. The first task for the military was making sure that the person signaling was the weapons officer and not someone in Iran who had found his equipment. At its campus in Langley, Va., the C.I.A. was developing a deception plan to buy the U.S. military and the airman some time. They spread word in Iran that the airman had been found and was being moved out of the country in a ground convoy. The hope was that the Iranians would shift their search from the place where the airman was thought to be and focus instead on the roads out of the region. The C.I.A. operation appeared to cause confusion among the Iranian forces hunting for the airman, according to a senior administration official. The Iranians, however, intensified their search, calling on the public via the state’s primary broadcaster to capture the “enemy’s pilot or pilots” and turn them over alive to security forces for a reward. On Saturday morning, Mr. Trump was escalating his threats against Iran, vowing to blow up the country’s electrical infrastructure unless its leaders opened the Strait of Hormuz to all traffic. “Time is running out — 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. At that moment, U.S. military officials were in the final stages of preparing a vast and complex rescue mission that involved about 100 Special Operations forces, led by elements of SEAL Team 6, with Delta Force commandos and Army Rangers on standby if needed. A far larger conventional force made up of helicopters, surveillance planes, fighters and aerial tankers was readied to provide support. A U.S. military official said it took hours to get the weapons officer’s location and determine that it was him. Military officials were assisted by the C.I.A., which used a special piece of technology unique to the agency to locate the airman hiding in the mountain crevice and confirm his identity. U.S. and Israeli officials gathered intelligence to determine if the airman was alone, surrounded by Iranians or had been captured. Once they determined the airman was alone, senior military officials waited until dark to launch a rescue mission. Special Operations helicopters, loaded with commandos, raced to the remote mountain site where he was waiting. A senior U.S. official described the rescue mission as one of the most challenging and complex in the history of U.S. Special Operations. The commandos had to contend with the mountainous terrain, the Iranian forces that they assumed would rush to attack them and the injured airman’s health, which remained uncertain. As the commandos landed on the objective, U.S. and Israeli warplanes dropped bombs whose bright orange blasts lit up the silhouettes of the surrounding mountains. From his hiding place, the weapons officer alerted his rescuers to the areas they should target for strikes, where he could see Iranians advancing, one senior military official said. The commandos fired their weapons ferociously to keep any Iranians in the area from advancing toward them. But they did not engage in a firefight with enemy forces. U.S. officials described the territory where the airman was hiding as strongly opposed to the Iranian regime and said it was unclear how close Iranian forces ever got to the site. He was rushed to a helicopter that whisked him off to a sandy, austere airstrip inside Iran that Special Operations forces had previously developed for possible rescues or other contingencies. The plan was to immediately load the airman and the rescue force onto two C-130 aircraft that were supposed to carry them out of danger to an airfield in Kuwait. But, in a final twist, the nose gear of at least one, and possibly both, of those planes got stuck in the sandy dirt at the airstrip, military officials said. Hours passed. Efforts to free the stuck wheels failed, so the commandos called in three replacement aircraft. Officials in the Pentagon and at Central Command waited anxiously. The success of a dangerous mission, which had seemed nearly complete, was suddenly once again uncertain. Eventually the commandos and the injured weapons system operator were reloaded onto three newly arrived replacement aircraft. After the rescue team left, American warplanes bombed the two disabled planes and four MH-6 Special Operations helicopters rather than let them fall into Iranian hands. As the sun was rising, the three planes launched in succession from the remote airstrip. The plane carrying the rescued airman went first followed by the others. When word reached the White House that the aircraft had cleared Iranian airspace, Mr. Trump announced the mission’s success. “WE GOT HIM!,” Mr. Trump exclaimed in a social media post a few minutes after midnight in Washington. “This brave Warrior was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran, being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour.” The rescued officer had “sustained injuries,” Mr. Trump wrote, but would be “just fine.” All of the commandos were safe and accounted for. There were no U.S. casualties. The moment of celebration seemed to pass quickly for Mr. Trump, who on Easter Sunday morning returned to the reality of an unpopular war for which he seemed to have no clear exit strategy. The airman was safe, but the Strait of Hormuz was still in Iranian control, imperiling as much as 20 percent of the world’s oil supply and the global economy. Mr. Trump had tried bullying America’s allies in Europe and Asia to come to his aid, but his entreaties were ignored. So he threatened Iran’s leaders in an angry and profane social media message. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.” Ronen Bergman and Adam Rasgon contributed reporting. Power plants, desalination stations, oil wells, roads, bridges and other infrastructure. They are the foundations of civilian life in Iran, and their destruction by American and Israeli forces would cause widespread suffering among the country’s 93 million people — and in most cases would be considered a war crime under international law. Yet President Trump has repeatedly threatened to do exactly that, with the aim of sending Iran “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong,” as he put it in a speech on Wednesday. On Easter weekend, he wrote online that “all Hell will reign down” on the Iranians unless they met a deadline of Monday to make concessions or open up the Strait of Hormuz to ship traffic, adding, “Glory be to GOD!” The president was emphatic about the targets in a follow-up post: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH. Praise be to Allah.” He is talking not just about civilian sites with military uses, which can be considered legitimate targets. In his speech on Wednesday, he said he would “hit each and every one” of the country’s power plants, “probably simultaneously.” The next day, after the American military destroyed a large bridge near Tehran, Iran’s capital, he exulted on social media: “Much more to follow!” At least 13 civilians were killed and 95 injured, an Iranian official said. No other recent American president has talked so openly about committing potential war crimes, legal experts, historians and former U.S. officials say. Wartime American presidents and their aides have usually insisted they were trying to follow international and U.S. military law, even if they violated it in some cases. International laws aimed at preventing the horrors of total war are codified in a series of agreements, including the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, the Nuremberg Principles and the United Nations Charter. Deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure violate those. So does pillaging a country, which Mr. Trump has suggested he might do by taking Iran’s oil. The Trump administration’s language and actions could have far-reaching consequences. Within Iran, it is likely to galvanize opposition to the United States, including among some ordinary Iranians who have protested their own government. “I don’t believe that Iranians have rallied around a deeply unpopular regime, but the destruction of infrastructure and rising civilian casualties strengthen the regime’s narrative that this is a war on the nation, not just its rulers,” said Karim Sadjadpour, a scholar of Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. On the global stage, it could further diminish America’s standing and weaken norms of state conduct in wartime that are intended to protect civilians. Legal experts say those norms have eroded in recent years because of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Sudanese civil war and the war against Hamas in Gaza by Israel, which is now invading Lebanon and attacking Iran with the United States. The American president has been unambiguous in his disdain for international law. In a two-hour Oval Office interview in January with The New York Times, Mr. Trump declared, “I don’t need international law.” When asked whether there was any limit on his global powers, he said, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality.” The world is seeing that thinking play out in real time. On Thursday night, after a day of public criticism by legal experts over the bridge strike, Mr. Trump doubled down, writing online that the U.S. military “hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran. Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants!” Mr. Trump’s aides are onboard. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last month that “we will keep pushing, keep advancing, no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.” A “no quarter” order — to kill all enemy soldiers, even those who are badly injured or who surrender — is a war crime under international law and in the U.S. military code. When pressed on Monday about a new threat by Mr. Trump to expand targets to civilian sites, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that the president prefers diplomacy, but that Iranian leaders are “lunatics.” “They are insane,” he said in an interview with ABC News. “They are religious zealots.” The Pentagon referred questions to U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East. The command did not reply to emails asking whether it had deliberately targeted civilian sites or would do so. ‘Clearly Unlawful and Deeply Misguided’ The administration’s language has alarmed many legal experts, who say the signal being sent to U.S. service members — and to foreign nations, including adversaries — shapes behavior on the battlefield. One hundred legal experts and lawyers voiced their concerns in an open letter published by Just Security last week. They said that the conduct of the war and rhetoric of U.S. officials “raise serious concerns about violations of international humanitarian law, including potential war crimes.” They pointed out that the very act of the United States’ attacking Iran is a violation of the U.N. Charter, since there is no evidence Mr. Trump was acting to defend his country against an imminent threat. And the president did not get congressional authorization for the war, in violation of the Constitution. “It’s something so clearly unlawful and deeply misguided,” said Oona A. Hathaway, a Yale law professor who co-wrote the letter and has worked as a special counsel at the Pentagon. “It’s hard to fathom how much the rules have been completely thrown out.” Mr. Trump began threatening to attack Iran’s civilian infrastructure on March 13, when he wrote online that he could decide to “wipe out” oil facilities on Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export hub. On Monday, he expanded the threat to include all electricity plants, oil wells and desalination plants in the country. When asked whether the United States could commit potential war crimes, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said at a news conference that “this administration and the United States armed forces will always act within the confines of the law.” But to achieve his goals, she added, the president “is going to move forward unabated, and he expects the Iranian regime to make a deal with the administration.” U.S. Central Command said Wednesday that American forces had hit more than 12,300 sites in Iran since Mr. Trump and Israel started the war on Feb. 28. Some of the attacks, aimed at military sites near civilian areas, have resulted in the killings of hundreds of civilians, including nearly 200 schoolchildren in one missile strike. “I really don’t feel well; the attacks have now reached civilian structures,” Amir Sarkandi, a tech entrepreneur in Tehran, said in an online forum after the bridge attack on Thursday. “Our national investments and treasures are being destroyed.” Israel has also struck civilian sites. Their officials insist they are destroying dual-use infrastructure. In retaliation, Iran has hit civilian sites in Israel and Gulf Arab nations. A Pentagon Pushing ‘Lethality’ Civilian sites can be considered legal targets if they are used by a military, said Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer specializing in the law of armed conflict who is a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group. That determination is usually made on a case-by-case basis. Mr. Hegseth, however, has fired and reassigned uniformed lawyers and dismantled many of the offices set up to prevent the targeting of civilians and related sites. Instead, he has talked endlessly about increasing “lethality.” “This secretary of defense has a track record of denigrating the law of war, denigrating military lawyers,” Mr. Finucane said. “It is very disturbing because we don’t know to what degree this rhetoric will translate to illegality.” If American service members carry out orders that they believe are war crimes, that could traumatize them, veterans say. Some active-duty Marines are already calling Mr. Hegseth’s agency the “Department of War Crimes” rather than the “Department of War,” the president’s name for the Defense Department, said Representative Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts, who served in Iraq as a Marine. During a standoff with Iran in his first administration, Mr. Trump threatened to destroy 52 cultural sites in the country. Mark T. Esper, then the defense secretary, acknowledged that hitting such sites would be a war crime and said the Pentagon would not do it. The second Trump administration has taken a different approach. For one thing, it has unleashed military violence in more brazen ways in a short period, carrying out airstrikes in eight countries in just one year. And the administration has drawn condemnation for nearly 50 strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that have resulted in at least 163 deaths. Mr. Trump has asserted, without presenting evidence, that the boats were carrying drugs to the United States, and that America is in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels. But legal experts say the strikes are outright murder. On March 4, a U.S. submarine torpedoed an Iranian frigate near Sri Lanka with about 180 people onboard. The destroyer had been returning home from military exercises in India, in which the United States had also participated. The U.S. military asked Sri Lanka to rescue survivors but did not directly do so, which some legal experts say could be a violation of the Geneva Conventions. In a speech, Mr. Trump recounted a conversation with American military officials about the frigate: “I said, ‘Why don’t we just capture the ship? We could use it. Why did we sink them?’ They said, ‘It’s more fun to sink them.’ They like sinking them better. They say it’s safer to sink them. I guess it’s probably true.” Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting from New York. President Trump said after announcing the rescue of an American airman in Iran that he would hold a news conference “with the Military” from the Oval Office on Monday afternoon. He did not provide further details. The president’s press availabilities in the Oval Office, however, tend to be with a smaller group of reporters than traditional news conferences. Democrats and scattered Republicans are criticizing President Trump’s blistering and obscene threats to Iran. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, said in a statement that the president was “ranting like an unhinged madman.” Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican and former Trump ally, wrote on X that the president’s approach was “insane.” And Representative Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, said in a text message that “Americans don’t want their President to be profane and vulgar.” He added, “Part of leadership is self-control.” Iran’s leadership, at least in public, is voicing defiance to President Trump’s expletive-laden ultimatum to bomb Iran’s power plants by Tuesday unless Iran fully reopened the Strait of Hormuz. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, wrote on social media that Trump’s “reckless moves are dragging the United States into a living HELL for every single family.” He added that “the only real solution is respecting the rights of the Iranian people and ending this dangerous game.” He did not specify on what terms Iran might reach an agreement with the United States to reopen the critical waterway. Eight members of the consortium of influential oil producing nations known as OPEC Plus expressed concern on Sunday about the toll the war with Iran was taking on global oil supplies and energy infrastructure in the region. The group, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait, also said that it would raise its oil production quotas by 206,000 barrels a day next month, a largely symbolic move because Iran’s virtual blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has obstructed their shipping of oil to world markets. “The committee stressed that any actions undermining energy supply security, whether through attacks on infrastructure or disruption of international maritime routes, increase market volatility,” the group said in its announcement. It added that “restoring damaged energy assets to full capacity is both costly and takes a long time.” President Trump on Sunday threatened Iran with further devastation unless it took steps to open the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping lane that has become a linchpin of the war. In an expletive-laden post on Sunday, Mr. Trump ordered Iran to open the strait, “or you’ll be living in hell,” saying that Tuesday would be “power plant day, and bridge day, all wrapped in one.” Several of the biggest oil-producing members of OPEC Plus have slashed oil production in the face of the severe shipping constraints. By mid-March, Persian Gulf countries had taken an estimated 10 million barrels of daily oil production offline, or about 10 percent of global supplies, the International Energy Agency said. It forecast that the cuts would deepen as the conflict wore on. As of Thursday, international oil prices had climbed roughly 50 percent, to $109 a barrel, since the United States and Israel started the war on Feb. 28. The eight members of OPEC Plus member countries involved in Sunday’s decision were: Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman. The Iranian Red Crescent Society said on Sunday that one of its ambulances had been hit in an airstrike as it was on an emergency relief mission in Sepidan County, Fars Province. Photographs and videos published on the Red Crescent’s social media page show the shell of a white vehicle scorched and mangled. The organization said that 46 of ambulances belonging to it or emergency medical services have been damaged during the war and that four of its aid workers have been killed. A residential building in Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, was hit on Sunday, authorities said, minutes after the Israeli military said it had detected missile launches from Iran. An Israeli military spokesman said it appeared to have been struck by a missile. Emergency crews were working to extinguish a large fire and search for people possibly trapped under the rubble, Israel’s Fire and Rescue Authority said. One man was seriously injured at the site, according to Magen David Adom, the national emergency service, while three more sustained light injuries. An advisor to Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has threatened to orchestrate the closure of another strategic waterway, a move that could increase disruption to global trade and oil and gas suppllies caused by the war. The advisor, Ali Akbar Velayati, warned in a social media post on Sunday that Iran could target the strait of Bab al-Mandab, a narrow shipping route at the southern end of the Red Sea. Iran has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a vital transit route for gas and oil from the Persian Gulf, spurring a sharp rise in global energy prices. When word reached Langley, Va., on Friday that Iran had downed a U.S. military jet and two Air Force officers had ejected into enemy territory, America’s top intelligence officers sprang into action. While the pilot of the F-15E Strike Eagle was relatively quickly rescued, the U.S. military was unable to locate a second crew member, a weapons systems officer, setting off an urgent race to find him before Iranian forces did. The C.I.A., which traditionally assists with efforts to rescue American pilots trapped behind enemy lines, developed a deception plan to buy time to find the airman by keeping the Iranians away from where he might be, according to a senior administration official. The official and others spoke under the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive rescue operation and intelligence collection. While U.S. officials did not initially know exactly where the weapons officer was, they knew he had moved from where his ejection seat had hit the ground. They also knew he was injured, adding to the urgency of the search. While it is unclear exactly what the deception plan involved or how successful it was precisely, the C.I.A. campaign aimed to spread word in Iran that the airman had been found and was moving out of the country in a ground convoy. The hope was that the Iranians would shift their search efforts from the place where the airman was thought to be, to the roads out of the region. The C.I.A.’s operation did appear to cause confusion and uncertainty among the Iranian forces hunting for the airman, according to a senior administration official. The airman evaded Iranian forces for more than 24 hours, eventually hiking up a 7,000-foot ridgeline and hiding in a crevice. All Air Force fighter pilots and weapons officers are equipped with a beacon and a secure communication device for coordinating with rescuers. But airmen are trained not to signal their location constantly, and restrict the use of the beacon, in case enemy forces can also track its location. A senior administration official declined to describe exactly what piece of technology the C.I.A. had used to locate the airman but said the equipment used was unique to the agency. As soon as he was found, the agency passed the information to the Pentagon and White House, which enacted their specific plan to extract the officer from his hiding spot, an operation that involved hundreds of special operations troops and other military personnel. The U.S. military began dropping bombs in the area to keep away Iranian forces. As U.S. commandos moved to where the downed airman was hiding, they fired their weapons to keep Iranian forces away from the rescue site, but did not have to engage in a direct firefight with the Iranians, a U.S. military official said, a possible sign that the deception campaign had lured away at least some of the Iranian forces hunting for him. Rescue planes then flew the injured airman to Kuwait for medical treatment. In an interview with Fox News, President Trump said he believed he could reach a deal with Iran by Monday. The president has regularly issued conflicting statements about his strategy to end the war, and also said in the interview that if Iran did not make a deal, he was “considering blowing everything up” and taking control of its oil. Trump added that the Iranians who were negotiating with the United States have been granted amnesty to continue the talks. After celebrating the recovery of a lost airman from the mountains in Iran on Saturday night, President Trump began Easter morning with a blistering threat to Iran that he would begin bombing its electric grid and bridges starting Tuesday morning, using an obscenity to punctuate his demand that the government in Tehran reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Mr. Trump has never shied away from threats and occasional vulgar language on social media, but this post would have stood out on any day, much less on what most Christians consider the holiest day of the year. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” he wrote a little after 8 a.m. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH. Praise be to Allah.” The president has swerved in the past week between claiming that the strait is not his problem, because the United States barely purchases oil flowing through the 21-mile-wide passage, and threatening to go after civilian infrastructure if Iran continues to restrict which ships can pass — and to charge $2 million tolls to those few ships it lets through. On Sunday morning he was back in threatening mode, with a vengeance. Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, called Mr. Trump’s comments “completely utterly, unhinged” in a post on X. “He’s already killed thousands,” Mr. Murphy wrote. “He’s going to kill thousands more.” Under the Geneva Conventions, striking power plants and bridges that are used primarily by civilians is off limits; they are not considered military targets. Administration officials are already beginning to make the argument that hitting them would not be a war crime because they are also crucial to the missile and nuclear programs. But that loophole could apply to almost any piece of civilian infrastructure, even water supplies. Mr. Trump’s vehemence may well underscore to the Iranians how powerful a tool control of the strait remains, perhaps their most effective surviving weapon after the loss of their navy, their air force and much of their arsenal of missile and launchers. The strait is not only the passageway for about 20 percent of the global oil supply, it is critical for fertilizer and for helium, which is critical to the manufacture of semiconductors. Mr. Trump is considering a ground operation to open the strait. But it would be complex — and may well require taking the Iranian shoreline of the strait and perhaps part of the Persian Gulf. Iran has many options to harass shipping — including laying mines and speedboats that can be used to launch shoulder-fired short-range missiles — that might make passage risky enough that shippers will not try to run through the narrow passage. Mr. Trump has called on European nations, China and India, all of which depend heavily on oil that moves through the strait, to join in an international coalition to keep it open. But because none of those countries were consulted about Mr. Trump’s decision to attack Iran, and some believe the war to be illegal or unwise, they have not yet agreed to participate in what would be a high-risk effort to keep it open. Israel’s military says it has identified about 165 rocket launches by Hezbollah, the Lebanese organization backed by Iran, that have landed inside or adjacent to the posts of U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon since cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel resumed in early March. At least three members of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, have been killed in recent weeks. Kandice Ardiel, a spokeswoman for UNIFIL, responded with a statement saying the force “has continually expressed concern about Hezbollah fighters and Israeli soldiers firing projectiles and bullets at or near our positions, actions which have already tragically caused death and injury among our peacekeepers.” Ardiel said both Hezbollah fighters and Israeli soldiers had carried out attacks from near UNIFIL positions, which could potentially draw return fire. About 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers are stationed in the region. In response to President Trump’s crudely worded threat on social media, Mizan, an outlet affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, said that “Iran’s steadfastness and resistance have driven Trump to the brink of madness.” As the escalating rhetoric between the sides portended a possible new phase in the conflict, Mizan expressed outrage over Trump’s warning, which came in the form of a social media post laced with expletives, and said he had insulted the Iranians with “vile” language. President Trump, apparently emboldened by the rescue of the downed American airman, renewed his threat to attack vital Iranian infrastructure if the Strait of Hormuz was not opened soon to all shipping traffic. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” Trump warned in a social media post that was laced with expletives. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH. Praise be to Allah.” Trump had set Monday as his latest deadline for striking Iranian power plants unless Iran halted its effective blockade of the strategic waterway for Persian Gulf oil and gas. An Israeli airstrike on a three-story building in the southern outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon, killed at least four people and injured at least 39 others, according to Lebanon’s official news agency. In an intense bombardment, Israeli warplanes had carried out seven raids on targets in the area by about 3:30 p.m. local time. The deadly strike on the building took place in a densely populated neighborhood, Al-Mqdad, close to the Rafik Hariri University Hospital, the news agency said. Earlier Sunday, the Israeli military said it was attacking Hezbollah “infrastructure sites” in the Lebanese capital after warning residents there to evacuate several areas on the southern outskirts of the city. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, on Sunday threatened to step up attacks on Iran’s petrochemical industry, saying the sector had brought in approximately $18 billion to support Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the past two years. Katz was speaking a day after the Israeli military struck a petrochemical complex in Mahshahr, in southwest Iran. He said the industry “directly serves the Iranian surface-to-surface missile production industry,”and constituted a significant part of the Iranian economy that enables the government to produce the weapons it fires at Israel. News Analysis Iran’s downing of an American fighter plane and the dramatic U.S. mission that followed to rescue a stranded airman provides both countries with fodder to claim a victory, but this chapter could end up propelling them toward further escalation. Iranian state media on Sunday published photographs of a charred American aircraft and declared that the downing of three American aircraft in three days was a triumph of “divine grace.” Reposting the picture, Iran’s hard-line speaker of Parliament, Mohammad Ghalibaf, said: “If the United States gets three more victories like this, it will be utterly ruined.” From the U.S. perspective, President Trump also emerged emboldened, boasting on Sunday about how American forces were able to pull off a risky ground operation and issuing a crudely worded threat that he would begin striking infrastructure targets. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” he wrote. Calling Iran’s leaders “crazy bastards” and using an expletive, he demanded they open the Strait of Hormuz shipping route, “or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.” Iran is now one day away from Mr. Trump’s ultimatum to strike critical Iranian infrastructure if Tehran does not make a deal with Washington, or open the strategic strait. Attacking bridges or power plants, which could plunge Iran’s population of more than 90 million into darkness, would constitute a war crime. Washington’s ally in the war, Israel, has already launched strikes on critical infrastructure, including a major pharmaceutical plant and its largest petrochemical complex. Iran has warned it will retaliate by bombarding similar strategic assets in neighboring Gulf countries. Such escalation could be devastating for millions of civilians in the region, and wreak further havoc on the global economy and the already volatile markets. “Iran’s approach is not to yield to these threats. Because if so, Trump will only continue,” said Sasan Karimi, a political scientist at the University of Tehran and the former deputy vice president for strategy in Iran’s previous government. “So Iran will use its maximum capability to retaliate — and not necessarily proportionally, because Iran’s infrastructure is vital, and hitting it is a violation of international law. A war crime, actually.” With both sides perceiving themselves as at an advantage, there is currently little hope of making progress on a diplomatic solution to end the crisis, said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director of the International Crisis Group, a research organization. “From this point on, this war will become even more dangerous than it was before,” he said. “This is exactly the kind of escalation trap that results in mission creep — which is if you constantly think that with more targeting and more pressure, you could eventually be able to force the Iranians to capitulate.” Another question is whether the successful rescue operation inside Iran will encourage Mr. Trump to try riskier things, such as sending limited ground troops onto islands in the Strait of Hormuz or mounting a special operation to seize Iran’s enriched uranium in an effort to cripple its nuclear program. “It might give the U.S. more confidence that they can do it,” said Farzan Sabet, an analyst of Iran and weapons systems at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland. While the successful Iranian strikes have raised doubts about U.S. and Israeli claims of having established “air dominance” over Iranian territory, Mr. Sabet said, U.S. forces may instead conclude they were simply too lax by allowing nonstealth aircraft to fly at low altitudes in a region where they may not have expected Iran to have air defenses. Yet observers say Iran has now repeatedly shown itself able to strike at U.S. aircraft in ways that should give Washington pause ahead of any further escalation of the war. Iranian forces have hit a base in Saudi Arabia, striking two U.S. KC-135 aerial refueling planes and destroying an American E-3 early warning detection system. Iran has also been successfully shooting down Israeli and U.S. drones, some military analysts say. And in retaliation for attacks on its water, energy, and other infrastructure, it has been launching strikes on similar targets across the Gulf. “In terms of Iran being able to conduct those offensive operations, what they’ve shown us is that when they — so far, more than a month into the war — when they need to hit a target, they can hit,” Mr. Sabet said. If U.S. forces were to move forward with the kind of major attacks Mr. Trump has threatened, Iran could respond, depending on what was targeted, by hitting desalination facilities that could endanger Gulf citizens’ access to fresh water — or by hitting gas and oil installations, which would plunge markets further into turmoil. Mr. Karimi, the former Iranian official, urged Arab countries in the Gulf to pressure Washington to back down from such a confrontation. “Whether it is justified or not from their point of view,” he said, “the whole region will be unsafe while Iran is unsafe.” Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting from London.