Iran threatens to retaliate after Trump ultimatum

WASHINGTON: Iran said on Sunday it would strike the energy and water ​systems of its neighbours in retaliation if US President Donald Trump follows through with a threat to hit Iran's electricity grid in 48 hours, escalating the three-week-old war.
The prospect of tit-for-tat strikes on civilian infrastructure could deepen the regional crisis and rattle global markets when they reopen on Monday morning.
Air raid sirens sounded across Israel from the early hours of Sunday, warning of incoming missiles from Iran, after scores of people were hurt overnight in two separate attacks in the southern Israeli towns of Arad and Dimona. The Israeli military said hours later that it was striking Tehran in response.
Trump threatened overnight to 'obliterate' Iran's power plants if Tehran did not fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, barely a day after he talked about 'winding down' the war. He made the new threat as US Marines and heavy landing ⁠craft are heading to the region.
But while attacks on electricity could hurt Iran, they would be potentially catastrophic for its neighbours, which consume around five times as much power per capita. Electricity makes their ⁠gleaming desert cities habitable, and most of them produce nearly all of their drinking water by purifying it from the sea.
Iran's Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf wrote on X that critical infrastructure and energy facilities in the Middle East could be 'irreversibly destroyed' should Iranian power plants be attacked.
Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards said it would also mean the shipping lane where a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas normally transits along Iran's southern coast would remain shut.
'The Strait of Hormuz will be completely closed and will not be opened until ‌our destroyed power plants are rebuilt,' the Guards said in a statement.
More than 2,000 people have been killed during the ​war the US and Israel launched on February 28, ⁠which has upended markets, spiked fuel costs, fuelled global inflation fears and convulsed the postwar Western alliance.
'President Trump's threat has now placed a 48-hour ​ticking time bomb of elevated uncertainty over markets,' said IG market analyst Tony Sycamore, ‌who expects stock markets to fall when they reopen on Monday. Oil prices jumped on Friday, ending the day at their highest in nearly four years.
Markets already under severe strain from blockaded shipping were further rattled last week when Israel attacked a major gas field in Iran, and Tehran responded with strikes on neighbours, ​raising the prospect of damage hindering energy output even if tankers resume sailing.
Iranian attacks have effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, causing the worst oil crisis since the 1970s. Its near-closure sent European gas prices surging as much as 35 per cent last week.
Iranian media quoted the country's representative to the International Maritime Organisation as saying the strait remains open to all shipping except vessels linked to 'Iran's enemies'.
The US and Israel say they have seriously degraded Iran's ability to project force beyond its borders with their three weeks of intensive air strikes. But Tehran fired its first known long-range ballistic missiles with a range of 4,000 km on Friday towards a US-British Indian Ocean military base, expanding the risk of attacks beyond the Middle East.
An Iranian strike also landed near Israel's ​secretive nuclear reactor about 13 km southeast of the city of Dimona.