If Donald Trump follows through on his threat to destroy Iran’s power plants, the vast nation will face a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ of monstrous proportions with millions struggling to get food, experts have warned.
Not only that, but if Washington targets the Islamic Republic’s essential infrastructure, the West can expect a terrifying wave of terrorist attacks and the globe will be plunged into financial Armageddon.
Tehran has a tight deadline of 8pm ET (1am BST Wednesday) to reopen the Strait of Hormuz before Trump unleashes the dreaded attack.
The US leader announced at last night’s press conference he would bomb the country so hard he would send it back to the ‘Stone Ages’ if a deal wasn’t reached, claiming: ‘The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night. I hope I don’t have to do it’.
He starkly added: ‘Every bridge in Iran will be decimated by tomorrow night. Every power plant will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again – I mean complete demolition’.
It came after his expletive-laden post on Truth Social on Sunday, where he announced: ‘Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran.
‘There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy b*****ds, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.’
Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, said in a social media post on April 5 that Trump was ‘ranting like an unhinged madman’ and ‘threatening possible war crimes’.
That’s because the destruction of power plants would impact everything in the country from running water to hospital emergency rooms, turning life for 90 million civilians into a never-ending nightmare.
Food production and distribution networks would collapse, spreading hunger and widespread food scarcity, while water pumping stations would stop functioning, triggering a rampant spread of preventable diseases.
Mass unemployment would run rife as businesses are forced to shutdown, and civilians would be cut off from electricity – deepening their isolation from the rest of the world after a months-long internet blackout.
‘Hitting power plants and desalination plants, for example, may be connected to some plausible military advantage, but that’s a very hard test to satisfy, and the details matter,’ David J. Scheffer, a former US ambassador at large for war crimes, told Bloomberg.
‘Ordering a Stone-Age obliteration of a country’s civilian infrastructure would defy the proportionality test in the law of war and international humanitarian law.’
Smoke rises over Azadi Square following a strike, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, April 6
A ball of fire rises from the site of an Israeli strike that targeted a building adjacent to the highway that leads to Beirut’s international airport on March 31
Talking to the Daily Mail, military analysts have said the consequences of an American attack would be catastrophic not just for the region, but the wider world, emboldening the regime’s lust for revenge.
‘With the ballistic missile capability and drone capability they’ve got remaining, Iran will launch attacks against as many Middle Eastern oil and gas infrastructures and water desalination plants as they can,’ said Philip Ingram, a former colonel in British military intelligence – adding that strikes on ships traversing the Strait of Hormuz would only continue.
The prospect of global recession would not just be a far-flung fear, but become a harsh reality, and Britain – trapped in a cost of living crisis – would be a prime target for the violent antics of Tehran’s vast network of underground sleeper cells.
‘We have to remember that in the last six weeks, we’ve seen individuals linked to Iranian intelligence – or recruited by Iranian intelligence – arrested on the streets of London,’ Ingram said.
It comes after Nematollah Shahsavani, 40, and Alireza Farasati, 22, were arrested in March after an investigation into alleged reconnaissance of Jewish targets on behalf of the Islamic regime.
As the US-Israeli war on Iran continues and chaos in the global economy deepens, Sir Keir Starmer is still attempting to keep Britain out of the conflict by emphasising that ‘this is not our war’.
But such rhetorical gestures are useless, Ingram says, because ‘we’re tarred with the same brush as the Americans’.
‘In fact, we’re hated more than the Americans. Targeting British interests across the region, out into the Mediterranean, such as Cyprus, and then up into the UK itself, is distinctly possible, if not highly probable.
‘Because the Iranians actually detest the British, and large parts of the Iranian regime detest the British slightly more than they detest the Americans, but we’re thrown into the same bracket as them.’
If Washington follows through with its threat to pummel the country, Nato nations such as the UK will be thrust further into the regime’s firing line – and the prospect of British soil being targetted by an Iranian missile is not off the table.
‘They have the potential to target Diego Garcia, they definitely have the potential to target the British sovereign-based areas in Cyprus, and theoretically have the potential to target the United Kingdom with ballistic missiles,’ Ingram said.
Earlier in the war, after Tehran targeted the UK-US base on Diego Garcia – the largest and southernmost member of the Chagos Archipelago – Israel’s military said European capitals were also at risk.
‘The IDF revealed that the Iranian regime has intentions to develop missiles with a range of 4,000km, which pose a danger to dozens of countries in Europe, Asia and Africa.
‘The Iranian regime denied this. We have been saying it: The Iranian terrorist regime poses a global threat. Now, with missiles that can reach London, Paris or Berlin.’
‘However, why would they want to use ballistic missiles when they can use terror tactics just as effectively?’ Ingram caveated. ‘Therefore, my biggest concern in the UK would be a rise in terror tactics.’
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive with the Easter Bunny on the balcony for the White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House on April 6
Smoke and flames rise at the site of airstrikes on an oil depot in Tehran on March 7
Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs on April 6
Pummelling Iran’s network of power plants may not even be an effective mechanism of forcing them into reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway through which a fifth of the world’s daily oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply passes.
Its de facto closure since the start of the war has surged the cost of crude, triggering the worst oil crisis in history. Prices opened higher on Monday, with the West Texas Intermediate – the US benchmark – rising 1.86 per cent to more than $112 a barrel and Brent climbing above $110.
‘I don’t think destroying Iran’s power plants will open the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranian regime know it’s Trumps Achilles heel,’ former British Army commander Hamish de Bretton-Gordon told the Daily Mail.
‘He can only open it with overwhelming military force. If Iran retaliates and attacks desalination plants and power as they say, this could either turn the Gulf States against the US or trigger a much wider war.
‘Trump must eventually realise you cannot treat conflict like some sort of real estate deal,’ he concluded.
In fact, if Trump follows through with his threats of mass bombardment, ‘all it’s going to do is cause the Iranians to double down,’ Ingram said, causing them to ‘look at mechanisms for creating a more permanent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, by mining it and attacking shipping’.
If the disruption to global energy flows continue, or gets worse, ‘it’ll mean a global recession is almost certain’, Ingram warned.
‘We will have increased transport costs…The days of cheap goods coming from China up into Europe are basically numbered at the moment, if this continues.
‘And of course, the impact is not just on oil and gas, but on other things like nitrates for fertilizers and helium for medical devices.’
To make matters worse, Tehran might be emboldened to enlist the Houthis to sow more chaos for the world economy by cutting off the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb.
Known as the ‘Gate of Tears’ in Arabic, the strait is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, carrying 12 per cent of the world’s oil shipments.
Vessels traverse the passageway to access the Red Sea and, ultimately, the Suez Canal from the Indian Ocean.
In recent weeks, the Iran-backed Shia Islamist militant group has threatened to choke off the 20-mile wide passage located south-west of Yemen, in a move that will escalate global financial woes and likely push oil prices to $150 a barrel.
Smoke and fire rise following an explosion in Isfahan, Iran, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video released March 31
Last week, the US President made it clear that if a deal wasn’t reached or the Strait of Hormuz remained shut, ‘American will conclude our lovely “stay” in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinisation plants!), which we have purposefully not yet “touched”‘.
But what would follow would be disastrous for Iran, triggering a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’, Jonathan Hackett, a former US Marine interrogator and counterintelligence agent, told the Daily Mail.
‘The threat to destroy Iran’s power and other critical infrastructure would have immediate, irreversible impacts on the civilian population in Iran, including the millions who initially welcomed the US-Israel campaign,’ he warned.
Tehran’s water crisis was a major instigator of the country-wide protests that erupted in December 2025, a year when the country’s water reserves were 95 per cent below their established threshold limits due to drought, aging infrastructure, and mismanagement.
‘Destroying desalination plants, water treatment facilities, and related infrastructure would transform an acute water crisis into a humanitarian catastrophe,’ Hackett says.
If Washington was to pound the regime’s power infrastructure, the day-to-day living in the country would transform quickly from bad to unlivable.
‘Iran’s ability to generate sufficient power was already weakened ahead of February 28. The central government struggled to fund state-run energy enterprises due to runaway inflation and a monetary policy designed to print more money rather than adjust interest rates,’ he said.
‘This in turn reduced the value of the currency and made sustainable investments in energy infrastructure nearly impossible, a problem worsened by the endemic corruption from which elites entrenched within the Islamic Republic have benefitted enormously at the expense of every day Iranians.’
And in retaliation to US attacks, the regime could produce a disaster for Gulf states by crippling desalination plants across the desert region, cutting off water supply for millions of people.
There are around five thousand desalination plants across the Middle East, more than four hundred of which are in the Gulf, but a smaller number of plants are responsible for a large share of the output.
For example, more than 90 percent of the Gulf’s desalinated water comes from just fifty-six plants.
A retaliatory attack on oil fields across Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait would further disrupt global supplies of crude and gas, triggering a cost of living emergency in Britain.
A cut to fuel duty should be extended to reflect the rise in petrol prices, the government’s cost of living champion Richard Walker has urgently warned Starmer.
The executive chair of the supermarket chain Iceland urged the Prime Minister not to raise the levy in September, in light of the conflict in the Middle East.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar has called for ‘urgent de-escalation’ following Trump’s recent rhetoric, as his country continues to play the role of mediator between Tehran and Washington – but talks have yet to yield any breakthrough.
‘Any targeting of civilian infrastructure, namely energy facilities, is illegal and unacceptable,’ European Council President António Costa said, adding: ‘This applies to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and it applies everywhere.’
As the countdown to Trump’s deadline continues, only time will tell whether the US President takes this perilous step to escalate hostilities, or if diplomacy enters at the final hour.
