The US President wants to bomb Tehran back to the negotiating table. The regime is planning massive retaliation.
July 16, 2026, 11:26 p.mJuly 16, 2026, 11:26 p.m
Michael Wrase, Limassol / ch media
A mural in Tehran shows the US president in a coffin: Tehran is threatening massive consequences for a US attack.Image: Abedin Taherkenareh
In order to bring Iran back to the negotiating table, US President Donald Trump wants to further intensify the attacks. On Wednesday he again threatened to destroy Iran’s infrastructure and named the “coming week” as a time window. “Then it will be really bad for them, because then it will be the turn of the power plants and bridges,” Trump said literally.
Iran, for its part, threatened to expand the war into new areas. An army spokesman announced that the reactions would exceed the enemy’s expectations.
Security experts see the most likely Iranian response to an escalation as increased mining of the Strait of Hormuz and additional attacks on ships, US bases in the region and the energy infrastructure of the Gulf states. This assessment is consistent with an analysis according to which Tehran would likely target energy and electricity facilities throughout the Gulf region in the event of an attack on its own civilian infrastructure, thereby further driving up oil and gas prices. This strategy deliberately expands the conflict instead of limiting it to the Iranian-American relationship.
War without a clear goal
Negar Mortazavi, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, says of Trump’s threats: Additional attacks by the USA would only generate more resistance from Iran. “Maximum pressure” did not cause Iran to surrender in the first phase of the war, but rather caused the exact opposite, she says.
Explosion at the Iranian naval base Bandar Abbas: The US military has released footage of a drone attack.Image: US Central Command via AP
Middle East expert Andreas Böhm, who teaches at the University of St. Gallen, told CNBC that Trump had started the war “without a clear goal,” which made it difficult to predict the next steps. Washington could not open the Strait of Hormuz militarily without conducting an operation on a scale that would be difficult to convey to the American public; a broader war against Iran’s infrastructure would bring retaliation back to the Gulf states’ energy infrastructure.
Böhm had already declared in May that Iran was clearly inferior in military and tactical terms. Since the Islamic Republic cannot end the war militarily, it must aim to increase the suffering on the American side to such an extent that it will give in. It is precisely this calculation – gaining time, increasing costs for the opponent – that is also likely to be behind a possible response to attacks against power plants and bridges.
Attacks on the water supply
A particularly sensitive level of escalation that has been discussed for a long time concerns the water supply in the Gulf region: analyst circles on the Arabian Gulf coast have been warning for months that the Revolutionary Guards could target desalination plants in neighboring countries if their own critical infrastructure were attacked.
Since virtually the entire drinking water supply of Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and large parts of the Emirates depends on such systems, this scenario is considered one of the most potentially serious – a step that would trigger a humanitarian crisis and spread the consequences of the war far beyond the immediate energy markets.
A recent statement by the Revolutionary Guard threatening to close other export routes to the United States and its allies is also causing concern. What was meant was a blockade of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the so-called “Gate of Tears” between Yemen, which is controlled by the Houthis, and Eritrea. “Then the oil price will rise to $200,” a Houthis spokesman threatened on Tuesday.