US and Israeli forces carried out a fresh wave of missile strikes on Iran late Monday and early Tuesday – reportedly hitting residential buildings, at least one school and electricity infrastructure – as President Donald Trump threatened not just Iranian leaders but the nation’s entire population with “death, fire and fury.”
In a Truth Social post, Trump said the US would “take out easily destroyable targets that will make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a Nation, again” if the Iranian government impedes oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which has slowed to a trickle since the start of the joint US-Israeli assault.
Following the president’s post, reports indicated that US-Israeli strikes hit a residential building in Iran’s capital, killing dozens of people.
“I was here a few hours ago. It was a huge disaster,” said one Tehran resident. “A large number of civilian bodies, including a child, were taken out of the complex in black bags.”
Iranian media reported that a US missile strike also damaged a school and nearby homes in the city of Khomeyn, hours after Trump continued to lie about the deadly attack on a girls’ elementary school in Minab. Available evidence indicates that the US military was likely behind the February 28 attack, which killed more than 160 people—mostly young girls.
“This is a war against the people of Iran,” Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the US-based Center for International Policy, wrote on social media, noting that AIPAC – the pro-Israel lobbying organization – boosted Trump’s late Monday Truth Social post threatening the entire nation of Iran.
Iranian officials responded with defiance to Trump’s menacing rhetoric and escalating US-Israeli bombings, which have killed more than 1,200 people and counting.
“We believe we must strike the aggressor in the mouth so that it learns a lesson and never again even thinks of aggressing against our dear Iran,” said the country’s speaker of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
Kamal Kharazi, a foreign policy adviser to the office of the Iranian supreme leader, told CNN on Monday that he doesn’t “see any room for diplomacy anymore, because Donald Trump had been deceiving others and not keeping his promises.”
Kharazi said the war will only end once “economic pressure” becomes sufficient for other countries to intervene and guarantee the “termination of aggression.”
As surging oil prices rattle the Trump administration, one unnamed senior Iranian source told media outlets that “we hold the screw of the global oil price in our hands, and for a long time the US will have to wait for our actions to control the price.”
“Energy prices have become unstable,” the source added, “and we will continue to fight until Trump declares defeat.”
This article originally published by Common Dreams is republished with permission.