The economic pain at home and civilian death in the Middle East wrought by President Donald Trump’s war on Iran could hit new levels in the coming days if he follows through on an oft-repeated threat to destroy Iran’s entire electrical infrastructure.

Trump says an attack, which would almost certainly be a war crime, will come if Iran does not agree to a “deal” by Tuesday night. That country’s leaders will likely hit back in kind against Gulf states that are helping the United States, according to military and Iran experts.

“Iran’s only retaliatory capability is to target America’s immediate allies in the Gulf, and Israel, if possible,” said Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Iran has, since the war began, struck military targets used by US forces in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. It has also targeted civilian infrastructure, but attacks on its own civilian infrastructure are likely to prompt further escalation. One especially life-threatening possibility is attacks on the Gulf states’ water desalination plants, which are even more critical to those predominantly desert countries than the ones in Iran.

“Iran has already demonstrated both its willingness and ability to retaliate in kind should the US and Israel escalate strikes on Iranian civilian infrastructure,” said Mona Yacoubian, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Bahrain and the UAE are among the likely countries to be hit. Israeli targets may prove more challenging, but Iran will certainly attempt to lash out at Israel as well.”

Such retaliation would dramatically increase the human suffering Trump’s war has already brought to the region, particularly if the damage to desalination plants reduces critical drinking water supply for residents.

Thirteen US service members have died in the war, with hundreds more injured. US and Israeli strikes in Iran have also killed at least 1,500 civilians, according to a human-rights group, including 175 at a girls school in the first hours of the attack.

Iran is also likely to hit more oil production and distribution facilities in the region, which could further inflame the world’s oil market. Crude oil prices have increased about 50% since Trump launched the war, with petrol prices up more than a dollar a gallon in America.

Industry executive Matt Randolph, though, points out that it could get even worse if Iran, with its Houthi allies in Yemen, chooses to close the entrance to the Red Sea as it has already done at Hormuz, the entrance to the Persian Gulf.

“If the response by Iran is to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and I believe they will, then oil prices jump a lot,” he said. “They did it briefly in 2024 just for fun. Just to see if they could.”

The Houthis attacked commercial shipping that year in retaliation for Israel’s total war approach in Gaza that wound up killing many tens of thousands of civilians there. Red Sea traffic was reduced dramatically for a period.

These possibilities did not appear to concern Trump on Monday. Speaking to reporters at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, he said Iran was not ready to accede to his demands to end the war.

“They just don’t want to say ‘uncle.’ They don’t want to cry, as the expression goes, ‘uncle,’ but they will. And if they don’t, they’ll have no bridges, they’ll have no power plants, they’ll have no anything. I won’t ― I won’t go further, because there are other things that are worse than those two,” he said.

Hours later at a White House news conference he called to celebrate the recovery of two Air Force crew members whose F-15 fighter plane was shot down in Iran late last week, Trump repeated that his deadline for Iran to capitulate was just over a day away.

“We’re giving them till tomorrow, eight o’clock eastern time, and after that they’re going to have no bridges, they’re going to have no power plants. Stone Ages. Yeah, Stone Ages,” he said.

Asked whether that level of destruction would not necessarily harm civilians, Trump claimed that everyday Iranians want to be attacked.

“They would be willing to ― they would be willing ― and it’s suffering. They would be willing to suffer that in order to have freedom. The Iranians have ― and we’ve had numerous intercepts: ‘Please keep bombing,’ bombs that are dropping near their homes, ‘Please keep bombing, do it.’ And these are people that are living where the bombs are exploding,” he said. “And when we leave and we’re not hitting those areas, they’re saying, ‘Please come back, come back, come back.’ These are the people.”

What precisely he wants from Iran, however, remains unclear. On several occasions since he began his air attack on February 28, Trump demanded regime change in Iran, but on Monday he said the regime has already changed. He continues to insist that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon while also saying that their programme to make one was “obliterated” in last June’s attacks.

And on Monday, he would not even say that reopening the Strait of Hormuz to unfettered oil tanker traffic was an absolute must ― which was the subject of his Easter demand that Iran “Open the Fuckin’ Strait” – because Iran could effectively close the strait merely by claiming to have laid mines in it.

“They’re very good bullshit artists,” he said.

Trump also again refused to lay out what plan he has, if any, to conclude the war. “I have the best plan of all, but I’m not going to tell you what my plan is,” he said.

He also waxed poetic about an era when larger countries could steal natural resources from smaller ones — known as “pillaging” and defined as a war crime by the Geneva Conventions — and wished he could “take” Iran’s oil.

“I’ve said, why don’t we use it — ‘To the victor, go the spoils’ — and we don’t have that. We haven’t had that in this country probably in 100 years, because even the Second World War, you look at the Second World War, we didn’t have it with the Second World,” he said, before adding that he is good at languages and can probably get elected president of Venezuela after he leaves the White House.

Trump has not ruled out using troops for a ground assault, but has not assembled anywhere near the size of a force necessary to seize and hold Iran’s oil production infrastructure.

When asked specifically whether he was trying to wind the war down or ramp it up, Trump responded: “I can’t tell you. I don’t know.”

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