President Donald Trump on Monday escalated his threats to devastate Iran if it does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even as he again floated the possibility that diplomacy may yet avert steps to prolong and deepen the war.

“We have a plan, because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again,” Trump said at a White House news conference. If the attacks take place, he added, “It will take them 100 years to rebuild.”

Trump gave a laudatory depiction of the rescue of a missing American airman shot down over Iran. The mission involved 155 aircraft and hundreds of people, he said, though “a lot of it was subterfuge” designed to lead Iranian forces away from the aviator. He also revealed that the plane, a U.S. Air Force F-15E, had been downed by a single shoulder-fired missile.

At an earlier White House appearance, Trump added to the conflicting signals that have characterized the conflict, now in its second month, by saying he wanted the United States to take Iran’s oil and profit from it. That would imply a long-term and risky U.S. presence in the region, but “unfortunately the American people would like to see us come home.”

His remarks to reporters came after Iran made a new 10-point peace proposal and after Trump renewed his threat to bomb Iranian civilian infrastructure if Iran does not allow shipping to pass freely through the critical strait, a conduit for a significant portion of the world’s crude oil and natural gas.

“It’s a significant proposal,” Trump said of the Iranian proposal, which was made through Pakistani mediators. “It’s a significant step. It’s not good enough. But it’s a very significant step.”

Later he said, “I can tell you that we have an active, willing participant on the other side. They would like to make a deal.”

The full contents of the Iranian plan were not made public, but diplomatic efforts have yielded little so far, despite Trump’s repeated claims of progress, with each side making demands that the other has dismissed as unacceptable. Iranian and U.S. officials have communicated mostly through intermediaries, like Pakistan.

“If it were up to me, I’d take the oil,” Trump said of Iran. “I’d keep the oil, and we’d make plenty of money. And I would also take care of the people of Iran much better than they’ve been taken care of. It’s been horrible.”

He has threatened repeatedly to bombard critical Iranian infrastructure, like power plants and bridges, setting deadlines for opening the strait and then repeatedly postponing them. On Sunday, he pushed back the deadline by a day, to Tuesday evening in the United States. Analysts say that without tangible progress toward peace, the postponements risk eroding the power of his warnings.

Trump said Monday that the Iranian people support the bombing campaign. “They would be willing to suffer that in order to have freedom,” he said, adding, “We have had numerous intercepts, ‘please keep bombing.’”

Iran said Monday that it would retaliate forcefully if Trump carried out his threatened attacks, which would affect millions of civilians, in what many legal experts argue could be considered war crimes under international law.

“If attacks on civilian targets are repeated, the subsequent phases of our offensive and retaliatory operations will be carried out much more crushingly and extensively,” Ebrahim Zolfaghari, an Iranian military spokesperson, said Monday.

Here’s What Else We’re Covering:

— University bombed: Overnight airstrikes hit Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran’s top science, engineering and math institute, prompting outraged responses from Iranians, including opponents of the regime. The university is under Western sanctions for ties to the Iranian military and agencies that develop weapons systems.

— Rescued airmen: The two U.S. airmen who were rescued after being shot down over Iran were receiving care at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a military hospital in Germany, a U.S. military official said.

— Attacks across the Middle East: Israel said it had bombed a major Iranian petrochemical complex Monday, just days after it struck a similar site — part of an avowed goal to destroy factories that fill Iran’s coffers. Israeli rescue workers retrieved the bodies of four people killed by an Iranian missile strike in Haifa, according to Israeli authorities.

— Warning from oil nations: Eight members of the consortium of influential oil producing nations known as OPEC+ on Sunday expressed concern 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.

— Death tolls: The Human Rights Activists News Agency said at least 1,606 civilians, including 244 children, had been killed in Iran as of Friday. Lebanon’s Health Ministry on Thursday said at least 1,345 Lebanese had been killed since the latest fighting between Israel and Hezbollah began. In attacks blamed on Iran, at least 50 people have been killed in Gulf nations. In Israel, at least 20 people had been killed as of Monday. The American death toll stands at 13 service members, with hundreds of others wounded.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Erika Solomon and Richard Pérez-Peña/Tom Brenner
c. 2026 The New York Times Company