Democracy Dies with Dictatorship
NY Times
Apr 5, 2026
Iran War Live Updates: Trump Escalates Threat to Hit Iranian Power Plants After U.S. Rescues Downed Airman
President Trump used an expletive-laden social media post to taunt Iranian leaders, saying that the United States would attack if they did not fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Updated
April 5, 2026, 9:22 a.m. ET15 minutes ago
Aaron BoxermanGreg JaffeHelene CooperYan Zhuang and Eric Schmitt
Here’s the latest
President Trump on Sunday escalated his threats to bomb Iranian power plants within the next two days and taunted the country’s leaders in an expletive-laden social media post.
Mr. Trump, seemingly emboldened by the successful U.S. rescue of an American airman in Iran over the weekend, issued a new ultimatum to Iran to end its chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz, a major Persian Gulf waterway for the transport of oil and gas, by Apr. 6.
If Iran’s government did not, he said, U.S. forces would target the country’s energy infrastructure, which supplies power for millions of civilians.
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. The president has previously postponed his deadline to attack twice and the Omani foreign ministry said on Sunday that officials had discussed how to reopen the Strait of Hormuz with Iranian counterparts without reaching a definitive agreement.
“Praise be to Allah,” Mr. Trump added, before signing off in all caps.
Iran has threatened to retaliate by intensifying its attacks on critical infrastructure in Israel and Arab states that are allied with the United States. An escalation could further derail the lives of civilians throughout the region and add to worries about the global economy, which has been rattled by soaring energy prices since the start of the war.
Over the past two days, the U.S. military has been in a race with Iranian armed forces to find the missing airman after an F-15E jet was shot down over Iran on Friday, in the first known instance of a U.S. combat aircraft since the start of the war.
The plane’s pilot was quickly rescued. But a second officer was stranded in Iran and injured in the incident. American commandoes found the airman deep inside Iranian territory under the cover of darkness.
There were no U.S. casualties among the rescue team, Mr. Trump said on Sunday. The rescued officer had “sustained injuries, but he will be just fine,” Mr. Trump added.
The incident underscored Iran’s ability to fight back despite weeks of attacks on its military arsenal. Another U.S. aircraft, an A-10 Warthog attack plane, crashed near the Strait of Hormuz at about the same time, and the lone pilot was rescued, two U.S. officials said. The Iranian military said its air defense systems had hit an A-10. The U.S. officials did not say what caused the plane to go down.
On Sunday, Israel and a number of Gulf countries reported attempted drone and missile strikes by Iran. Kuwaiti officials said Iranian drones significantly damaged two power and water desalination plants, and sparked a fire at the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation’s oil complex.
U.S. officials had sought an offramp to the war with Iran by passing messages through Pakistani mediators. But Iranian officials have publicly dismissed the U.S. demands, which would have restrained Iran’s missile and nuclear programs.
Here’s what else we’re covering:
Airman rescue: U.S. commandos operated deep inside Iran at night in one of the most challenging and complex rescues in the history of American special operations. A Navy SEAL team extracted him after a nerve-racking race between the U.S. and Iran. Read more ›
Dwindling interceptors: The war in the Middle East has underscored the importance of antimissile interceptors in warfare but the conflict is rapidly depleting global supplies. Israel and Persian Gulf states have managed to weather most Iranian ballistic missile barrages thanks to the sophisticated defenses, but it is unclear how long the stockpiles will last, even as conflicts loom elsewhere around the world. Despite U.S. and Israeli efforts, Iran has been quickly repairing its bombarded missile bunkers and silos, according to U.S. intelligence reports. Read more ›
Petrochemical factories hit: Israel on Saturday struck a petrochemical complex in Mahshahr, a sprawling industrial center in Iran’s southwest that plays a significant role in the country’s economy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said the targeted sites were part of a “money machine” that brought in revenues for the Iranian government. At least five people were killed and 170 others injured in the attack on the major oil industry hub, state media in Iran reported.
April 5, 2026, 9:32 a.m. ET5 minutes ago
Isabel Kershner and Sanam Mahoozi
In response to President Trump’s crudely worded threat on social media, Mizan, an outlet affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, said that “Iran’s steadfastness and resistance have driven Trump to the brink of madness.” As the escalating rhetoric between the sides portended a possible new phase in the conflict, Mizan expressed outrage over Trump’s warning, which came in the form of a social media post laced with expletives, and said he had insulted the Iranians with “vile” language.
April 5, 2026, 9:30 a.m. ET8 minutes ago
Reporting from Jerusalem
President Trump, apparently emboldened by the rescue of the downed American airman, renewed his threat to attack vital Iranian infrastructure if the Strait of Hormuz was not opened soon to all shipping traffic. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” Trump warned in a social media post that was laced with expletives. Trump had set Monday as his latest deadline for striking Iranian power plants unless Iran halted its effective blockade of the strategic waterway for Persian Gulf oil and gas.
April 5, 2026, 9:09 a.m. ET29 minutes ago
Isabel Kershner and Reham Mourshed
An Israeli airstrike on a three-story building in the southern outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon, killed at least four people and injured at least 39 others, according to Lebanon’s official news agency. In an intense bombardment, Israeli warplanes had carried out seven raids on targets in the area by about 3:30 p.m. local time. The deadly strike on the building took place in a densely populated neighborhood, Al-Mqdad, close to the Rafik Hariri University Hospital, the news agency said. Earlier Sunday, the Israeli military said it was attacking Hezbollah “infrastructure sites” in the Lebanese capital after warning residents there to evacuate several areas on the southern outskirts of the city.
April 5, 2026, 8:30 a.m. ET1 hour ago
Isabel Kershner and Gabby Sobelman
Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, on Sunday threatened to step up attacks on Iran’s petrochemical industry, saying the sector had brought in approximately $18 billion to support Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the past two years. Katz was speaking a day after the Israeli military struck a petrochemical complex in Mahshahr, in southwest Iran. He said the industry “directly serves the Iranian surface-to-surface missile production industry,”and constituted a significant part of the Iranian economy that enables the government to produce the weapons it fires at Israel.
April 5, 2026, 8:19 a.m. ET1 hour ago
Reporting from Cairo
News Analysis
After daring U.S. rescue of airman, Iran claims a victory
Iran’s downing of an American fighter plane and the dramatic U.S. mission that followed to rescue a stranded airman has provided both countries with fodder to claim a victory, but this chapter could end up propelling them toward further escalation.
Iranian state media on Sunday published photographs of a charred American aircraft and declared that the downing of three American aircraft in three days was a triumph of “divine grace.” Reposting the photograph, Iran’s hard-line speaker of Parliament, Mohammad Ghalibaf, said that “if the United States gets three more victories like this, it will be utterly ruined.”
From the U.S. perspective, President Trump boasted about how American forces were able to pull off a risky ground operation using commandos to rescue a serviceman from deep within enemy territory, even as Iranian forces amassed in the area to hunt him down.
To have both sides so emboldened at this moment is particularly precarious for the region.
“From this point on, this war will become even more dangerous than it was before,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director of the International Crisis Group, a research organization. And with both sides claiming to have the advantage, he added, there is currently little hope of making progress on a diplomatic solution to end the crisis.
Iran is now one day away from Mr. Trump’s ultimatum threatening to strike critical Iranian infrastructure if Tehran does not make a deal with Washington or open the strategic Strait of Hormuz shipping route.
Without an agreement, he has warned, U.S. forces will begin striking targets like Iranian power plants that could plunge Iran’s population of more than 90 million into darkness. Time was running out, he warned before “all Hell” rains down.
Iran would most likely respond by bombarding similar strategic assets in neighboring Gulf countries, experts said. The results of such an escalation could be devastating for millions of civilians in the region, and wreak further havoc on the global economy and the already volatile markets.
“They both still think they can gain the upper hand in this conflict and end it on their own terms,” Mr. Vaez said.
Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting from London.
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April 5, 2026, 7:22 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Isabel Kershner and Sanam Mahoozi
The Iranian authorities executed two men for their involvement in anti-government protests in January, Iranian state media reported on Sunday. The men, identified as Mohammad Amin Biglari and Shahin Vahedparast, were hanged, according to the reports, which said they were convicted of attacking military sites.
Iran has executed at least 13 political prisoners since the start of the war on charges including armed rebellion, membership in militant groups, and espionage for Israel, according to the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, a Norway-based group that monitors activities in Iran.
Iranian authorities regularly extract forced confessions from defendants through pressure tactics including solitary confinement, threats against family members and torture, according to human rights groups.
April 5, 2026, 7:16 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Isabel Kershner and Reham Mourshed
Israeli warplanes had carried out five raids on targets in the southern outskirts of Beirut by mid-afternoon local time, Lebanon’s official news agency reported. One strike hit a gas station belonging to Al-Amana, a fuel company that has been targeted by U.S. sanctions for alleged links to Hezbollah.
April 5, 2026, 6:49 a.m. ET3 hours ago
Reporting from Jerusalem
Officials from Oman and Iran have held talks on making it easier for ships to transit through the Strait of Hormuz, the Omani foreign ministry said on Sunday. The ministry said on social media that the countries’ deputy foreign ministers and “specialists” spoke on Saturday, and each presented a number of proposals.
Iran has blocked most traffic through the strategic waterway since the start of the war, driving up global energy prices. President Trump has threatened to strike Iranian power plants unless a deal to reopen the strait was reached, but he has delayed his ultimatum twice. Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, said on Thursday that Iran was drafting a protocol that would allow Iran and Oman to oversee transit.
April 5, 2026, 6:14 a.m. ET3 hours ago
Isabel Kershner and Sanam Mahoozi
Iranian officials on Sunday sought to downplay the U.S. rescue of the downed American airman, denying that he was recovered after Iranian forces shot down a fighter jet on Friday.
An Iranian military spokesman portrayed the U.S. operation as a failure, in remarks published in state media that appeared to be aimed at a domestic audience.
Hours later, Fars, a semiofficial Iranian news agency, reported that the American search operation for the pilot was “ongoing.” In a separate statement published by state media, Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesman for the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, a command center for the Iranian military, described the American operation as a “deception.”
April 5, 2026, 5:37 a.m. ET4 hours ago
Reporting from Jerusalem
The Israeli military launched a new round of strikes in Lebanon on Sunday, saying that it was attacking Hezbollah “infrastructure sites” in Beirut. The announcement was issued about an hour after the military warned residents of the Lebanese capital to evacuate several areas on the southern outskirts of the city.
April 5, 2026, 5:01 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Interceptor missiles save lives, but stockpiles are dwindling
Since the start of the war in the Middle East, Iran has launched 23 cruise missiles, 498 ballistic missiles and a staggering 2,141 drones at the United Arab Emirates, according to the Emirati Ministry of Defense.
But the glittering towers of cities like Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah stand largely unharmed, and fatalities have been minimal. That is a testament to the effectiveness of modern military air-defense systems, which track and target missiles traveling faster than the speed of sound and shoot them out of the sky with another missile, saving many lives and sparing homes and property.
The wars in Ukraine and now the Persian Gulf have highlighted the crucial role interceptors play in protecting cities like Kyiv or Tel Aviv or Riyadh, not to mention American bases in Bahrain, Kuwait and other Gulf states. But the supply chain behind those interceptors has been strained for years, stressed by the war in Ukraine, past engagements with Houthi rebels along the Red Sea and last year’s 12-day war with Iran.
Missile defense experts are sounding increasingly dire warnings that if the war with Iran continues, stockpiles could become dangerously low, leaving allies around the world vulnerable to attacks.
“We started this conflict with a big hole,” said Tom Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The center published a report on the depleting inventory of interceptors in December, before the current conflict even kicked off. “The hole got a lot bigger over the last month as we keep shooting these things off,” Mr. Karako said of the interceptors.
The dwindling supply of interceptors among the United States and its allies is in part attributable to Iran’s tenacious ability to go on the offensive — launching drones and missiles at Israel, American bases and civilian targets in the Gulf.
“Do not hope that you have destroyed our strategic missile production centers, long-range offensive drones” and modern air defense, a spokesman for the leadership of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a video statement on Thursday.
Further, defense doctrine calls for two interceptors fired for each incoming missile, referred to as “shoot — shoot — look.” That means defensive stockpiles are depleted twice as fast as the offensive weapons they are shooting down.
In the current war, the U.S. military coordinates air-defense systems with Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and others. They rely on a variety of launch systems — including Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries, both fired from land, or Standard Missiles launched from Navy warships at sea.
An air-defense system is more than just a glorified quiver of missiles. A THAAD battery, for instance, includes 48 interceptors divided among six launchers mounted on trucks, a command-and-control platform and a radar. A Patriot battery also has a radar set and control station among its components.
In the opening days of the war, Iran conducted strikes aimed at communication and radar systems on at least seven U.S. military sites across the Middle East, trying to effectively blind the systems used to track incoming missiles. It is unclear how successful the strikes were.
The number of interceptors in a nation’s arsenal is a closely guarded secret. No country wants its enemy to know just when it might run out. But analysis of Gulf state defenses suggest the waves of missile and drone attacks by Iran have sorely depleted the interceptor inventories in countries like the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain.
For instance, a report by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, or JINSA, a Washington research organization, estimated that the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain had expended more than three-quarters of their Patriot missile PAC-3 interceptor stockpiles, one of the main defensive missiles in their arsenals. The report relied on an analysis of each nation’s prewar stockpiles and its potential interceptor use since the start of the conflict.
The governments did not respond to a request for comment on the JINSA assessment.
Intercepting missiles has become a routine part of warfare for the United States and its allies, especially Israel, for whom it is a daily part of domestic defense. The interceptor systems provide a security blanket but are not foolproof. Israel’s vaunted, three-tier missile defense system came under growing scrutiny after two Iranian ballistic missiles evaded air defenses near Israel’s main nuclear research facility and reactor last month.
Even when missiles are intercepted, civilians and property are not necessarily out of harm’s way. Falling wreckage from the collision of two missiles can rain down on towns and cities; debris from an intercepted missile killed two people in Abu Dhabi last month.
The rise of cheap drones has complicated the math for militaries using expensive interceptors. An adversary can attack with one-way drones that cost tens of thousands of dollars, forcing its enemy to deploy multimillion-dollar air-defense systems to repel them. And the drones are much more easily and rapidly replaced.
A cease-fire with Iran would not completely solve the interceptor shortage, experts said.
Shortages in interceptor inventories are a global challenge. That was most acutely obvious in Ukraine after Russia invaded four years ago, launching large volleys of missiles, and later drones, at Ukrainian towns and cities, bombardments that continue to this day. In pleading for Western weaponry, Kyiv has regularly emphasized the urgent need for air-defense systems.
But it is not only Ukraine and Middle East countries that are counting on a steady supply of interceptor systems. Countries like Taiwan, South Korea and Japan are relying on missile batteries to deter potential aggression by North Korea or China, and with the nations of Western Europe getting serious about their defenses against Russia, the global nature of the challenge has become apparent.
President Trump has tried to goad the American defense industry into revving up the military supply chain. He signed an executive order in January limiting stock buybacks and dividends by defense contractors unless they sped up production and quality. In March, he hosted the chief executives of major contractors like Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin at the White House to discuss ramping up production.
Lockheed Martin announced plans in January to more than triple production of PAC-3 interceptors for Patriot batteries.
South Korean defense manufacturers have increasingly stepped in to try to fill the gap. The United Arab Emirates began using a Korean-made air-defense system last month that had never before been tested in combat but that reportedly shot down 29 of 30 of the missiles and drones it targeted, according to the South Korean news media and a government official.
But the complexity of the interceptor systems makes them hard to mass produce quickly, said Tal Inbar, an Israeli senior research fellow at the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a nonprofit based in Virginia.
Mr. Inbar said that the kinds of interceptors used in THAAD or Arrow-3 systems require sub-components that are made to order, advanced electronics and a great deal of testing. “There are no stockpiles of those systems,” he said, “so again you are relying on other factories and in some cases other countries.”
“It’s not like a factory producing 9-millimeter pistol ammunition,” he said.
John Ismay contributed reporting.
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April 5, 2026, 4:03 a.m. ET6 hours ago
Breaking news reporter
Bahrain’s Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company said an Iranian drone attack caused fires at several of its operational units on Sunday. All the fires were extinguished and no casualties have been reported, the Bahrain News Agency reported. The attack occurred shortly after the authorities in the United Arab Emirates said fires had broken out at a petrochemical plant in Abu Dhabi caused by falling debris after its air defenses intercepted an attack.
April 5, 2026, 3:10 a.m. ET6 hours ago
Breaking news reporter
The authorities in the United Arab Emirates are responding to several fires that broke out at the Borouge petrochemical factory, which were sparked by falling debris from successful air defense interceptions, the Abu Dhabi media office said early Sunday. No injuries were reported, said the office, which did not provide details about the origins of the attack. In a separate incident, Israel struck a petrochemical complex in Mahshahr, Iran, on Saturday.
April 5, 2026, 3:07 a.m. ET7 hours ago
Breaking news reporter
A fire at a storage facility for Bapco Energies, Bahrain’s state-owned energy company, was doused early Sunday after an Iranian drone attack sparked the blaze, the state news agency cited the company as saying.
April 5, 2026, 3:04 a.m. ET7 hours ago
Breaking news reporter
The Israeli military said early Sunday that it had struck more than 120 targets in central and western Iran over the past 24 hours, including ballistic missile sites, drone production and launch sites, and air defense systems.
April 5, 2026, 12:20 a.m. ETApril 5, 2026
Breaking news reporter
President Trump said in a social media post just after midnight that the Air Force officer who had been shot down in Iran had been brought out safely by U.S. forces. “He sustained injuries, but he will be just fine,” Mr. Trump said. He described a tense rescue operation with officials in the United States monitoring the officer’s location at all times and dozens of aircraft sent to retrieve him. The weapons systems officer was one of two members of the F–15E Strike Eagle who ejected from the cockpit on Friday after Iran’s military shot down the plane. The pilot had been rescued earlier.