Judul : Is this why Trump changed his mind? All the ways Iran could retaliate for US energy strike
link : Is this why Trump changed his mind? All the ways Iran could retaliate for US energy strike
Is this why Trump changed his mind? All the ways Iran could retaliate for US energy strike
Donald Trump has announced he has postponed strikes against Iranian energy sites for five days, after threatening to attack if the Islamic Republic did not allow the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours.
It came after Washington and Tehran held talks on the 'complete and total resolution of hostilities' in the Middle East, with the US President announcing the war could end within a week if upcoming negotiations go well.
The U-turn followed Iran's threat to 'irreversibly destroy' essential infrastructure and energy facilities across the Middle East on Sunday, in an alarming escalation of rhetoric.
Perhaps the US President changed his mind due to the increasing aggression of Tehran, with the regime having deployed long-range missiles for the first time in the conflict, targetting Diego Garcia, the joint US-UK military base in the Chagos Islands, with two ballistic missiles.
Meanwhile, the continued shutdown of the Persian Gulf channel has triggered the world’s worst oil crisis since the 1970s and sent European gas prices soaring by as much as 35 per cent last week.
But Iran still has several military options available to further intensify hostilities, including the possibility of targetting major European cities such as London and Paris with intermediate-range missiles, according to experts.
The regime could also trigger a global energy crisis by destroying the Middle East's biggest oil factories, after the country's state media published infographics of power plants in the region that its forces could target.
One infographic was titled 'Say goodbye to electricity!' and showed potential targets in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait, as other maps showed Orot Rabin and Rutenberg, Israel's two largest power plants.
Tehran could topple the water supply for millions of people in the Middle East and unleash a humanitarian catastrophe, if it follows through on earlier threats to pummel the region's desalination plants.
The military has threatened to deploy 'naval mines' in the Gulf if the US and Israel were to attack any of its coasts or islands, with reports indicating Iran has already begun laying mines in the strait.
And while Tehran has successfully strangled the Persian Gulf, it might go further still in its attacks on the global economy by enlisting its terrorist Houthi allies to shutdown shipping in the Red Sea.
Moreover, after a series of violent incidents across the US and Europe, speculation is building that the regime is enlisting its international sleeper cells to terrorise the world as an extension of its military campaign.
Iran could strike European capitals
Iranian missiles large enough to destroy a building could reach major European capitals including Britain, Paris, Berlin and Rome, military experts have warned.
It comes after Tehran launched two ballistic missiles towards targeting the joint UK-US military base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, 2,361 miles from Iran.
'Their range reaches European capitals — Berlin, Paris, and Rome are all within direct threat range,' Israel’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, claimed.
While the first missile was intercepted by a missile fired from a US warship between Thursday night and Friday night, the second failed in flight after travelling 1,990 miles, some 400 miles from the outpost in the Chagos islands.
Foreign affairs analyst Nawaf Al-Thani reacted to the Diego Garcia strikes on social media, saying that a long-held assumption about Iran's missile capability 'has just collapsed'.
'For years, the accepted ceiling was around 2,000 kilometres [1,243 miles]. A ballistic missile reaching Diego Garcia suggests something in the neighbourhood of 4,000 kilometres [2,500 miles], which pushes it out of the medium-range category and into the intermediate-range class (IRBM). That is a strategic leap.
'The real story is not whether the missile was intercepted. It is that Iran may have demonstrated reach far beyond what much of the world believed it possessed.
'Paris comes into range. London moves much closer to the edge of vulnerability depending on launch point and payload.
'This would mean the missile threat is no longer confined to the Gulf, Israel, or parts of South Asia. It would mean the radius of deterrence, defence, and fear has expanded dramatically.
'If confirmed, Diego Garcia was not just a target. It was a message.'
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch accused Sir Keir of covering up the attempted attack on Diego Garcia, saying the Prime Minister needed to ‘come clean’ over the details of the launch.
General Sir Richard Barrons, a former Commander in Chief of British forces, said on Saturday that Iran’s power may have been ‘serially underestimated’.
According to experts, the most likely missiles deployed by Tehran were the Khorramshahr-4, which could reach parts of the UK if the regime used a lighter warhead to increase the range.
Iran's self-declared limitations advertise the missile's range as 1,243 miles, but that was with a 1.5 ton warhead. This heavy payload enables a disastrous strike and the warhead would detach amid final flight stage to ensure a strike with pinpoint accuracy.
But Dr Sidharth Kaushal, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), estimated it would need a 450-550 kg payload to double its range to 2,500 miles and hit targets in England if launched from the northeast of the country.
'Since the Musudan - the North Korean missile which it is based on - can go much further, it was always known that this a bit of a misdirection by the Iranians and they could increase the range with a lighter warhead,' Kaushal told the Times.
Moreover, it is understood that rockets equipped for Iran's space programme could be redesigned for military usage.
While there is a lack of evidence of the civilian rocket - the Qaem-105 - being utilised for a ballistic missile, it has long been known that it was built with a dual-purpose in mind.
But if such weapons were fired towards England, they would be 'very unlikely' to land in London, according to one military source who spoke to the newspaper.
'It would have to fly a long way over multiple air defence networks and be very precise,' they added.
Crucially, Britain is protected by Nato’s Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system, designed to detect, track and intercept ballistic missiles in flight.
It is comprised of two Aegis Ashore sites in Poland and Romania, and up to four US navy Arleigh Burke-class destroyers - better equipped than the Royal Navy’s Type 45 destroyers - out of Spain and an early warning radar in Kurecik, south eastern Turkey.
Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at Rusi, said: 'If launched towards the UK, this is what Nato’s BMD is designed for. The UK isn’t actually defenceless against a threat launched from Iran.'
Attacking desalination facilities
Iran 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.
Tehran threatened on Sunday to 'irreversibly destroy' essential infrastructure across the Middle East, including including vital water systems, if the US follows through on Trump’s threat to 'obliterate' Iran’s power plants unless the strait of Hormuz is fully opened within 48 hours.
The Iranian military’s operational command headquarters, Khatam al-Anbiya, said Tehran would strike 'all energy, information technology and desalination infrastructure' belonging to the US and Israel in the region.
Meanwhile, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on Sunday that vital infrastructure in the Gulf – including energy and desalination sites – would be 'irreversibly destroyed' if his country’s own infrastructure was targetted.
It came after Amnesty International announced this month there was a significant risk that attacks on systems providing essential services such as electricity, heating and running water would violate international law and 'in some cases could amount to war crimes'.
This is due to the potential for 'devastating civilian harm and environmental impact posed by such attacks'.
The country's Revolutionary Guards seemingly backtracked on the threat against cutting off the region's water supply in a statement on Monday, however.
'The lying ... U.S. President has claimed that the Revolutionary Guards intends to attack the water desalination plants and cause hardship to the people of the countries in the region,' the militia said on social media.
'We are determined to respond to any threat at the same level as it creates in terms of deterrence ... If you hit electricity, we hit electricity.'
Attacks on desalination plants could cripple the Middle East, which is one of the driest regions the world, where water availability is 10 times lower than the global average.
Moreover, about 42 per cent of the globe's desalination capacity is based in the region.
'Over there, without desalinated water, there is nothing,' water economist Esther Crauser-Delbourg told the Times, highlighting how any strike on such major infrastructure could trigger a major humanitarian crisis.
Striking Middle East power plants
Tehran has threatened to destroy the Middle East's biggest oil plants, in a move that could prove catastrophic for the Gulf and cause a global energy crisis.
An attack on oil fields across Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait could trigger a cost of living emergency in Britain, with Sir Keir Starmer scheduled to chair a COBRA meeting on Monday to address the war's impact on the economy.
Iranian attacks have effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz which has proved disastrous for global energy and trade flows, sending the world's oil prices soaring.
Brent crude, the global benchmark, has surged about 55 per cent since late February to around $110 a barrel, while US West Texas Intermediate has climbed 50 per cent to around $99.
The divergence between the two benchmarks recently hit its highest in a decade, excluding a brief spike during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It adds up to bad news for the UK economy, where experts are now predicting inflation could hit five per cent this year, while interest rates could be hiked two or even three times.
Since war broke out on February 28, Tehran has already struck Qatar's Ras Laffan Industrial City complex, the country's main liquefied gas (LNG) facility, causing 'significant damage' to infrastructure.
Qatar is the world’s third-largest exporter of LNG, and Ras Laffan accounts for roughly a fifth of the global supply.
Because the country is a major supplier to Europe and Asia, the attack sent European natural gas prices soaring by as much as 30 percent on Thursday.
The strikes removed 17 per cent of the factory's LNG capacity, equal to 3.5 per cent of global supply.
Potential energy sites which may now be in Tehran's sights include the UAE's Ruwais refinery in Abu Dhabi - the Middle East's largest single-site refinery responsible for producing up to 922,000 barrels of oil per day.
Saudi Arabia's Abqaiq processing facility, located approximately 37 miles southwest of Dhahran in the country's Eastern Province, could also be bombarded.
It is the world’s biggest oil processing and crude stabilisation plant and supplies up to seven million barrels a day.
The country's Samref refinery, which produces 402,000 barrels of oil a day into petrol, diesel and jet fuel, is another target.
Qatar's Mesaieed Petrochemical Complex, responsible for turning gas and oil into polyethylene which is primarily used in plastic packaging, may also be in Iran's crosshairs, as well as the UAE’s al-Hosn gasfield.
With analysts warning of $200 a barrel, motorists would feel the pain first, with warnings that diesel could reach £2 a litre within a fortnight, surpassing the peak in 2022 triggered by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The possibility of tit-for-tat military responses from Iran and the US has also placed a 'ticking time bomb' on the global market, according to analysts.
Last week, Israel launched air strikes on South Pars, the world's largest natural gas field, which accounts for about 70 per cent of the country's total gas production.
Mining the Strait of Hormuz
The US is considering plans to occupy or blockade Iran's Kharg Island - the country's main oil export hub located 20 miles off the beleaguered nation’s southern coast - to pressure Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping, according to Axios.
But the regime on Monday threatened to deploy 'naval mines' in the Gulf if the United States and Israel were to attack any of its coasts or islands.
'Any attempt by the enemy to attack Iranian coasts or islands will naturally, and in accordance with established military practice, lead to all access routes and communication lines in the Persian Gulf and coastal areas being mined with various types of naval mines, including drifting mines deployable from the coasts,' said the country's defence council in a statement carried by state media.
'In this case, the entire Gulf will practically be in a situation similar to the Strait of Hormuz for a long time (...) One should not forget the failure of more than 100 minesweepers in the 1980s in removing a few sea mines.'
The defence council - which operates under the Supreme National Security Council - was formed after Iran's 12-day war with Israel in June 2025.
Trump's recent warning to strike Iran's power network if it doesn't reopen the Strait issued a defiant response from the IRGC, which said: 'The Strait of Hormuz will be completely closed and will not be opened until our destroyed power plants are rebuilt.'
Tehran has already been laying mines in the crucial strait, according to US officials, in an effort that could further complicate American efforts to restart shipping there.
While the American military said it had destroyed larger Iranian naval ships that could be used to quickly lay mines in the waterway, Iran has already began using smaller boats for the operation.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps can deploy thousands of the small boats for the mission, which the Iranian force has long used to harass larger ships, including the US Navy’s.
Houthis could attack the Red Sea
A US-led naval coalition has warned that the Houthis - the Iran-backed Yemeni militant group - may enter the war and target the Red Sea, choking another key oil route.
Iran has cut off oil supplies in the Persian Gulf by shutting down the narrow Strait of Hormuz that leads to the Indian Ocean. But Saudi Arabia has pipelines that allow it to partly avoid the blockage by rerouting crude across the peninsula to the Red Sea port of Yanbu.
This exit path sees vessels past hundreds of miles of Houthi-controlled coastline leading to another chokepoint at Bab al-Mandeb, the strait that links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.
Combined Maritime Forces, which protect shipping traffic in the Middle East, warned that Houthi rebels have issued statements threatening to deny access to the Bab el-Mandeb.
'Our finger is on the trigger,' Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior Houthi official, announced earlier this month. 'Yemen joining the conflict is only a matter of time.'
'Regarding the decision to stand alongside Iran, that decision has already been made,' he said.
'They’ve got super useful real estate,' Adam Baron, a fellow at think tank New America, told the Wall Street Journal.
'If you are Iran and your aim is to build pressure by shutting down another key maritime shipping network, then obviously the Houthis are the easiest way to do that.'
Despite being long-dismissed, the Houthi militants are formidable opponents and seized control of Yemen's capital and many of its population more than a decade ago amid civil war, fending off an Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
During the war in Gaza, Houthi drone and missile attacks all but halted traffic through the Red Sea and Suez Canal, forcing shippers to take the longer journey around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.
The rebels also struck Israel, more than 1,000 miles away.
'If the Houthis enter the conflict, it really raises the stakes,' said Baron.
'It pulls the Suez Canal and the Egyptians in, it brings Saudi further in.'
Violence of Iranian sleeper cells
Several incidents of violence that have swept America and Europe since the war began may be linked to Iranian 'sleeper cells' spreading terror throughout the world, according to experts.
Israel fears that Tehran may have been behind the arson attack on ambulances belonging to the Jewish community's ambulance service in north London on Monday morning.
The Metropolitan Police is treating the incident as an antisemitic hate crime.
Four Hatzola ambulances were set ablaze in Golders Green, producing several explosions, understood to be linked to gas cannisters onboard the vehicles.
While no arrests have been made, CCTV footage appears to show three suspects dressed in black walking towards an ambulance before setting it on fire.
It comes after two Iranians were charged last week with spying on Jews in London for the Islamic regime in Tehran, while a separate Iranian man will appear in court on Monday after he and an accomplice allegedly attempted to enter the Faslane naval base, home to the UK's nuclear-armed submarines.
The site, on the Gare Loch about 25 miles northwest of Glasgow, is Britain's most important nuclear base.
Within 24 hours of the first strikes in Iran on February 28, a man wearing a shirt with the colours of the Iranian flag killed three people and injured more than a dozen others at a bar in Austin, Texas.
Just a week later, two teenagers from Pennsylvania who said they were inspired by the Islamic State attempted to set off an explosive device at a protest in New York.
Roger Macmillan, a terrorism and security specialist, told the Daily Mail: 'Iran’s terror network doesn’t stop at the Middle East.
'It reaches into European capitals, onto American soil, and onto British streets.
'Since 2022, UK security services have disrupted well over twenty Iranian-linked, potentially violent plots on home soil, including assassination and kidnap attempts.
'No country is immune. The UK is not a spectator in this conflict; it is a theatre of operations.'
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