President Donald Trump listens to a question as he speaks with reporters in flight on Air Force One after landing at U.S. Air Force Base at RAF Mildenhall, in Suffolk, Eastern England, Wednesday, July 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)Donald Trump’s threat to blow up Iran’s power plants and bridges is “a potential war crime”, according to a Middle East expert.
The US president made the threat as the ceasefire agreed between Iran and America teeters on the brink of collapse.
“Next week it gets really bad for them,” Trump told Fox News. “We’re going to knock out all their power plants. We’re going to knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.”
On Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s chief international correspondent, said Trump was “baffled” by Tehran’s refusal to agree a peace deal.
She said: “The problem now is that President Trump doesn’t have any good options.
“He is understandably baffled by Iran. He has been that way since the very beginning.
“Months before the war started and you had this steady build up of American military might in the Persian Gulf, he mused to his special envoy Steve Witkoff ‘how come they’re not giving in when they see what they’re potentially going to face’?
“And last night, he says Iran are like a great boxer refusing to give up. You think you have them beat them all of a sudden they come back and give you a shot’.
“He also invoked again the spectre of the United States and possibly Israel too bombing every last bridge and every last power plant, but that is a potential war crime and the reality is that President Trump does not want to return to an all-out war.
“He’s facing midterm polls in November, he’s facing rising oil prices, he’s facing discontent in the American public, but Iran … has also suffered in this war, has lost a lot of its military capability. It doesn’t want to go back to an all-out war either, but neither side if willing to back down.”
Trump has claimed victory on multiple occasions since America and Israel first started bombing Iran at the end of February.
But he has been accused of “making it up as he goes along” after he ditched plans to impose 20% tariffs on ships in the Strait of Hormuz just 24 hours after announcing it.
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