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By Brendan Cole
Senior Reporter
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Iran’s parliament speaker warned that any attack on his country’s power plants or infrastructure would trigger retaliatory strikes by Tehran on energy and oil facilities across the Middle East.
The comments by Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf were in response to a warning by President Donald Trump that Tehran had 48 hours to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or the U.S. would "obliterate" Iranian power plants.
Ghalibaf said Sunday that strikes on Iranian sites as threatened by Trump would mean that Iran would consider energy and oil facilities across the region "legitimate targets" and would be destroyed in an "irreversible" manner. This would keep the oil prices high, he added, adding to energy market turbulence caused by Tehran in effect blocking the Strait.
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Trump had said Saturday that Iran had 48 hours to open the Strait of Hormuz or the U.S. would destroy "various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!" He did not specify further but these could mean the Bushehr nuclear power plant, Iran's biggest, or Damavand, a natural gas plant near Tehran, Iran's capital.
Trump's warning comes as he grapples with elevated oil prices due to Iran’s blocking of the waterway which is critical for global oil and natural gas supplies. Seyed Ali Mousavi, Iran’s envoy to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), said navigating the strait is possible for "everyone except enemies," but in effect, the waterway is closed to all but a few vessels.
Another top Iranian official, Ebrahim Zolfaghari, spokesman for the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, warned of retaliatory attacks on all fuel, energy, information technology and desalination infrastructure" the U.S. and Israel use in the region. The Iranian news agency Mehr said that even a limited strike on Iran’s electricity infrastructure would plunge the region into darkness, adding "say goodbye to electricity."
Mehr published a map marking major regional power plants including sites in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, and said up to 80 percent of them were built along the Persian Gulf coastline and within range of Iranian missiles.
It comes as the Iran enters its fourth week amid fears of continued escalation. On Sunday, sirens blared across Israel amid Iranian attacks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toured the city of Arad and there was also devastation in the city if Dimona, The Associated Press reported.
They are the largest cities near the Negev Desert nuclear center and were hit after Israel’s air defense systems were penetrated. Attacks overnight Saturday also targeted a U.S. diplomatic and logistics center at Baghdad’s International Airport, according to local officials.
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