Trump threatens to ‘unleash hell’ after Iran said it would target a second major oil

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: ‘The president’s preference is always peace. There does not need to be any more death and destruction.

‘But if Iran fails to accept the reality of the current moment, if they fail to understand that they have been defeated militarily and will continue to be, president Trump will ensure they are hit harder than they have ever been hit before.

She added: ‘President Trump does not bluff, and he is prepared to unleash hell. Iran should not miscalculate again. Their last miscalculation cost them their senior leadership, their navy, their air force and their air defence systems.

‘Any violence beyond this point will be because the Iranian regime refuses to understand they have already been defeated and refuse to come to a deal.’

Iran has warned it will strike USS Abraham Lincoln, one of the world’s biggest aircraft carriers, if it falls within range of its missiles.

The threat comes after a large-scale missile attack failed to hit the vessel.

Footage has emerged of the moment Iran launched a series of shore-to-sea cruise missiles at the Lincoln carrier, which was deployed to the Middle East to support Operation Epic Fury.

Speaking in the White House yesterday, Donald Trump said: ‘They shot 100 missiles at one of our aircraft carriers, one of the biggest ships in the world, actually. And of 101 missiles shot, every single one of them was knocked down.’

But Iranian Navy commander Shahram Irani warned the warship was under constant surveillance ahead of another possible attack.

‘The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier is under constant Iranian monitoring and will be targeted as soon as it comes within range of missile systems,’ he said, according to the SNN news agency.

The chief of the United Nations has raised the alarm over the prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres spoke out on Iran’s continued obstruction of the key international shipping lane in a statement on X.

He said the move is ‘choking the movement of oil, gas [and] fertiliser at a critical moment in the global planting season’.

Tehran has insisted the some 25-mile waterway remains open, saying on Wednesday ships not linked to the US, Israel or their allies are free to pass through.

Mr Guterres added: ‘Across the region and beyond, civilians are enduring serious harm and living under profound insecurity.’

He said the best way to alleviate suffering would be to ‘end the war – immediately’.

A series of Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon have killed three people and injured 11, according to a state-run Lebanese news agency.

The strike on Qounine in the country’s Bint Jbeil district saw three people killed and four wounded, the Lebanese Ministry of Health said, as per a report by NNA.

Meanwhile, Israeli raids on Toulene in the Marjayoun district injured seven others, the department said in a separate statement.

An Iranian airport has been hit by US-Israeli projectiles, according to the IRNA news agency.

Lamerd International Airport in the country’s southwestern Fars province has been struck in the attack, according to the Iranian-run outlet.

Initial reports have suggested there were no casualties.

Two people have been killed and eight have been injured in an Israeli air strike in southern Lebanon, state media has reported.

The attack targeted the town of Harouf, in the Nabatieh district of southern Lebanon, according to the state-run National News Agency (NNA).

The US has said it remains ‘on plan or ahead of plan in achieving very clear military objectives’ during its ongoing war with Iran.

The country’s Central Command said in a statement these aims are ‘eliminating Iran’s ability to project power in meaningful ways outside its borders’.

Commander Brad Cooper said Washington has struck more than 10,000 military targets and flown more than 10,000 combat flights in Iranian skies.

He also said, in the same video update, the US has ‘overwhelmed Iranian air defences and our combat flights over Iran are having tangible effects’.

The commander claimed the States has destroyed ’92 per cent of the Iranian navy’s largest vessels’.

He also said the country’s drone and missile launch rates are now by ‘more than 90 per cent’.

Commander Cooper added more than two-thirds of Iran’s missile, drone and naval shipping production facilities and shipyards have been damage or destroyed.

The Iranian foreign minister has further spoken out on the United States’s reported 15-point plan for peace in the Middle East.

In a somewhat enigmatic move, Abbas Araghchi said in a televised interview with state media: ‘If a position needs to be taken it will certainly be determined.’

He said ‘some ideas’ have been put forward as to how to end the conflict and that in ‘one or two instances’, he has seen this called a ’15-point plan’.

The official added: ‘These [ideas] were being presented in various formats as different ideas, all of which have been passed on to the country’s senior authorities.’

Mr Araghchi did not outright reject the reported American plan – but he did also say Iran has ‘no intention of negotiating for now’.

He further confirmed: ‘The American side has begun sending various messages through different intermediaries.’

Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi at the traditional Quds Day rally in the capital of Tehran earlier this month

Israeli soldiers in a military jeep near the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon on Wednesday

Iran has said Lebanon and Hezbollah must be included in any ceasefire agreement with the US and Israel, according to news agency Reuters.

Such an arrangement would mean the war could only end if Israel’s offensive against the Iranian-based terrorist group, which is based in Lebanon, was also stopped.

Mediators were told by Tehran as early as mid-March it was seeking this sort of deal, according to regional sources.

Hezbollah has reportedly received ‘Iranian guarantees’ it would be included in any broader peace agreement.

An insider said: ‘Iran is prioritising Lebanon – it will not accept Israeli violations in Lebanon like what happened after the 2024 ceasefire.’

Israel and Hezbollah have been attacking each other since March 2, after the US and Israel first struck Iran on February 28.

Israel has also stepped up its ground offensive in southern Lebanon in recent days.

It says it aims to occupy much of the area to create a ‘defensive buffer’.

Iran is also thought to want any peace deal to end the conflict both on Iran and other Middle Eastern ‘resistance groups’, according to state television.

Tehran is waiting for American troops to arrive, an Iranian military advisor has said.

Mohsen Rezaie, who was recently appointed as an aide to the country’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, made the statement in a post on X.

He wrote: ‘When they have achieved no results from their air force, which is their strength, what do they expect from a ground operation?

‘Do American soldiers want to die for Israel? We are waiting.’

Mr Rezaie was previously a commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

The US plans to send more than 1,000 extra troops from an airborne assault unit to the region, Sky News has reported.

Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE’s ambassador to the US, wrote in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal that America’s war with Iran should only end in a way that removes the long-term threat Tehran poses to the Middle East.

He wrote: ‘We want Iran as a normal neighbor. It can be reclusive and even unwelcoming, but it can’t attack its neighbors, blockade international waters, or export extremism.

‘Building a fence around the problem and wishing it goes away isn’t the answer. It would simply defer the next crisis.’

Iran has been laying traps and moving military personnel and air defences to Kharg Island in preparation for a possible US invasion.

CNN reported that Iran is putting anti-personnel and anti-armour mines across the island, including on the shoreline where US may need to stage an amphibious landing.

The US has already targeted Kharg, with US Central Command stating on March 13 that 90 targets, including ‘naval mine storage facilities, missile storage bunkers, and multiple other military sites’ had been hit.

But Trump said the US military had avoided hitting oil infrastructure ‘for reasons of decency’.