IN BRIEF
- Donald Trump says Iran has 48 hours to open Strait of Hormuz or face "hell".
- US and Iranian forces are searching for a missing crew member from downed US warplane.
US President Donald Trump said overnight that Tehran had 48 hours left to cut a deal or face "all Hell", as US and Iranian forces scrambled to find a downed American airman.
Trump's latest threat came after a strike near an Iranian nuclear power plant prompted evacuations, and as Tehran announced fresh attacks and the Israeli military said it had detected another missile launch from Yemen.
"Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT," Trump wrote on Truth Social, referring to an ultimatum issued on 26 March.
"Time is running out — 48 hours before all Hell will reign (sic) down on them."
Iran's central military command overnight rejected Trump's threat to destroy the country's vital infrastructure.
General Ali Abdollahi Aliabadi, in a statement from the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, said Trump's threat was a "a helpless, nervous, unbalanced and stupid action".
And, echoing the religious language of Trump's social media post, he warned that "the simple meaning of this message is that the gates of hell will open for you".
Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they hit a commercial ship in Bahrain, as they maintained their tight grip on the Strait of Hormuz shipping lane and continued to strike economic targets in their Gulf neighbours they see as linked to the US-Israeli war effort.
The economic strikes are also going the other way. An Israeli or US strike on a petrochemical hub in the southwest of Iran killed five people, according to the deputy governor of Khuzestan province.
The war erupted more than a month ago with US-Israeli attacks on Iran, triggering a retaliation that has spread the conflict throughout the Middle East and convulsed the global economy — particularly due to the closure of the strait, a vital conduit for oil and gas.
Hunt for missing US service member continues
Tehran said on Saturday it had shot down an F-15 warplane and US media reported United States special forces had rescued one of its two crew members, with the other still missing.
Iran's military also said it downed a US A-10 ground attack aircraft in the Gulf, with US media saying the pilot of that plane was rescued.
The local Mehr news agency on Saturday quoted the deputy governor of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, Fattah Mohammadi, as saying the search for the missing pilot involved "presence of popular forces and tribesmen alongside military forces and is still ongoing".
He added that "last night, people fired at enemy helicopters with rifles and did not allow them to land".
Images posted on social media and verified by Agence France-Presse showed Iranian police firing at a US helicopter in southwestern Iran as US forces searched for the airman.
Retired US brigadier general Houston Cantwell, who has 400 hours of combat flight experience, said a pilot's training would likely kick in even before he or she parachuted to the ground.
"My priority would be, first of all, concealment, because I don't want to be captured," he told AFP.
Bushehr nuclear plant hit again
A strike near Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant on Saturday killed a guard and led Russia, which partly constructed the facility and helps operate it, to announce it was evacuating 198 workers and to condemn the strike as "an evil deed",
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi warned that continued attacks on the plant on the southern coast could eventually lead to radioactive fallout that would "end life in GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) capitals, not Tehran".
Bushehr is considerably closer to Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar than it is to the Iranian capital.
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, wrote on X that no increase in radiation levels had been reported at the site, but nonetheless voiced "deep concern" at what he said was the fourth such strike in recent weeks.
The latest attack comes after another projectile hit the nuclear power plant last week, but did not result in damage. An Iranian strike had also hit the southern Israeli town of Dimona, home to a nuclear facility, in what Tehran said was in response to an earlier attack on its nuclear site at Natanz.
It prompted the United Nations to warn that strikes around Iran and Israel's nuclear sites risk could unleash an "unmitigated catastrophe" and that the war in the Middle East had created an "extremely dangerous" situation.
UN rights chief Volker Türk said many of the strikes in the weeks-long war "raise serious concerns under international law". In particular, Türk cautioned that "recent missile strikes near nuclear sites in both Israel and Iran underscore the immense danger of further escalation".
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