* Iran's acting defence minister makes defiant statement
President Donald Trump warned yesterday that the US would obliterate Iran’s energy plants and oil wells if Tehran does not open the Strait of Hormuz, after Tehran described US peace proposals as “unrealistic” and fired waves of missiles at Israel.
Israel’s military said two drones from Yemen had also been intercepted yesterday, two days after the Houthis entered the war by firing missiles at Israel, and that Lebanon’s Hezbollah had fired rockets at Israel.
Israeli forces carried out missile strikes on what they called military infrastructure in Tehran and infrastructure used by Hezbollah in Beirut, leaving black smoke hanging over the Lebanese capital. Turkiye’s defence ministry said a ballistic missile launched from Iran entered Turkish airspace before being shot down by Nato air and missile defences deployed in the eastern Mediterranean, the fourth such incident since the start of the war.
Tehran remains defiant in the month-old war, which began with US-Israeli attacks on Iran on February 28 and has spread across the region, killing thousands, disrupting energy supplies and hitting the global economy.
The majority of those reported killed were in Iran and Lebanon, and many were civilians. Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that normally carries about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies.
Thousands of soldiers from the US Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division have started arriving in the Middle East, two US officials told Reuters yesterday, part of a reinforcement that would expand Trump’s options to include the deployment of forces inside Iranian territory, even as he pursues talks with Tehran.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later said Trump wanted to reach a deal with Tehran before an April 6 deadline he set last week after extending an earlier deadline he had set for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz.
Leavitt said talks with Iran were progressing, adding that what Tehran says publicly differs from what it tells US officials in private. Iran said earlier yesterday it had received US peace proposals via intermediaries, following talks on Sunday between the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said the proposals were “unrealistic, illogical and excessive”.
“Our position is clear. We are under military aggression. Therefore, all our efforts and strength are focused on defending ourselves,” he told a press conference.
Soon after Baghaei’s remarks, Trump said in a social media post that the US was in talks with a “more reasonable regime” to end the war in Iran, but he also issued a new warning over the Strait of Hormuz.
“Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island,”
Trump wrote.