On the menu today: This past weekend, President Trump threatened the remaining Iranian regime that today would be “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day.” As the day begins on America’s East Coast, there are reports of airstrikes by the U.S. or Israel or both hitting bridges, while Israel has targeted Iran’s steel and petrochemical facilities. New reports indicate that Iran’s civilian leaders are definitely interested in a deal for a temporary cease-fire, while Tehran’s military leaders are resolutely opposed. Meanwhile, it turns out that Ayatollah Nepo Baby owns some pricey real estate on London’s “Billionaires’ Row.” Read on.
Incinerating the Infrastructure
At 8:03 a.m. Eastern on Easter Sunday, President Trump posted an unorthodox presidential message on Truth Social:
Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F*****’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.
You don’t usually see the president of the United States dropping an F-bomb and praising Allah in the same message on the day of the Christian celebration of the Resurrection.
Shortly after 8 a.m. this morning, Trump followed up on Truth Social:
A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!
As this newsletter is being written, reports from Iran indicate that U.S. strikes against Iranian bridges have begun; by the time you read this, there may be reports of attacks on Iranian power plants or other energy infrastructure.
This morning, London-based Iran International English reports:
- “A bridge on the Tabriz-Zanjan highway in northwest Iran was hit in an attack by US and Israeli forces, Iranian media reported on Tuesday.”
- “A US-Israeli strike hit the Yahyaabad railway bridge near Kashan in central Iran on Tuesday, killing two people and wounding three others, state media reported, citing Isfahan province’s deputy governor.”
- “Iranian state media said on Tuesday Kharg Island was struck, with explosions reported on the island.”
Now, reports from Iranian state media must always be taken with a healthy amount of salt, but when the U.S. president threatens to strike a type of target, and two days later that type of target suddenly explodes, there is a good chance those two events are connected. Fox News Channel’s chief national security correspondent, Jennifer Griffin, quotes a senior U.S. official that the “U.S. hit dozens of military targets on Kharg Island overnight. . . . The targets that the US hit on Kharg Island included bunkers, radar station, ammunition storage. Landing docks were not intentionally targeted. Only would have been struck if Iranians fired something from next to them, according to senior US official who spoke to Fox News.”
The U.S. Department of Defense’s Law Manual, updated in July 2023, states that bridges and power plants can be legitimate targets for a military strike, provided they meet particular criteria, such as providing the enemy with a military advantage:
The military advantage in the attack of an individual bridge may not be seen immediately (particularly if, at the time of the attack, there is no military traffic in the area), but can be established by the overall effort to isolate enemy military forces on the battlefield through the destruction of bridges.
The loss of civilian life can be deemed acceptable, if the harm is not deemed excessive:
For example, if the destruction of a power plant would be expected to cause the loss of civilian life or injury to civilians very soon after the attack due to the loss of power at a connected hospital, then such harm should be considered in assessing whether an attack is expected to cause excessive harm. On the other hand, the attacker would not be required to consider the economic harm that the death of an enemy combatant would cause to his or her family, or the loss of jobs due to the destruction of a tank factory. Similarly, in determining the expected loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects, the attacker would not be required to consider the possibility that a munition might not detonate as intended and might injure civilians much later after the attack. This is due to the difficulty in assessing such risks and the responsibility of the party controlling the territory and the civilian population to take steps with regard to the protection of the civilian population from unexploded ordnance.
Those who are old enough to remember General Norman Schwarzkopf’s briefing showing the video of “the luckiest man in Iraq” will recall that there is nothing new about U.S. forces destroying a bridge in the Middle East.
This morning, Iran International offers an intriguing report suggesting the remaining Iranian regime is not as uniformly defiant as its fiery public statements would suggest:
A deepening rift at the top of the Islamic Republic has spilled into an unusually sharp confrontation, with President Masoud Pezeshkian accusing senior Guards commanders of unilateral actions that have wrecked ceasefire prospects and pushed Iran toward disaster.
Two sources close to the presidential office said a tense exchange took place on Saturday, April 4, between Pezeshkian and Hossein Taeb, a powerful figure close to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. Those present described the conversation as unusually difficult and highly charged.
During the meeting, Pezeshkian accused IRGC chief commander Ahmad Vahidi and Ali Abdollahi, commander of Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters — the country’s armed forces’ unified command, of acting unilaterally and driving escalation through attacks on regional countries, especially against their infrastructure.
According to the sources, Pezeshkian said those policies had destroyed any remaining chance of a ceasefire and were steering the Islamic Republic directly toward “a huge catastrophe.”
He also warned that, based on what he described as precise assessments, Iran’s economy would not be able to withstand a prolonged war for much longer and that full economic collapse was inevitable under current conditions.
Last night, Amit Segal’s newsletter reported a similar assessment of internal Iranian split: “According to an Israeli source, there is division within the regime’s leadership: civilian leaders have been pushing for acceptance of the ceasefire, but are being rebuffed by hardliners in the IRGC. Unless the civilians prevail tonight, there will be no ceasefire.”
Now, if you’ve been reading this newsletter, you know that the state of the Iranian economy is exceptionally bad — the least valuable currency in the world, as of March 11 — and getting worse.
Note that you cannot hit the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps without hitting the country’s infrastructure, and vice versa. From the Middle East Forum:
On April 4, 2026, when Israeli aircraft struck eight petrochemical plants in the Mahshahr industrial zone in southwestern Iran. Among them was the Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex — the largest petrochemical facility in the country.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is involved in all these projects. For example, 49 percent of the shares of Khuzestan Steel Company are held byYas Holding, which is affiliated with the Islamic Cooperative Foundation.
Even the chief executive officers of some of these institutions have Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps affiliations or ties. For instance, Saeed Sadeghi, the chief executive officer of Petrochemical Amir Kabir in Mahshahr, is the son of General Hossein Reza Sadeghi, the former deputy coordinator of Intelligence Protection in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and current advisor to the commander in chief of the Guard. His received his appointment through connections, despite his background being only in the marriage registration office. . . .
In addition to production facilities, Israeli strikes reportedly hit two power generation units in Mahshahr, leading to a widespread electricity outage across the petrochemical zone—effectively halting operations. Iranian officials estimate that approximately $30 billion has been invested in developing the Mahshahr petrochemical hub.
By targeting these sectors, Israel is not only inflicting immediate economic damage but also striking at the pillars of Iran’s long-term industrial development. The pattern is clear: the campaign is designed to degrade Iran’s economic resilience by hitting its largest, most visible, and most productive assets.
United Against Nuclear Iran calculated that Iran’s oil exports produced $45.7 billion in 2025, and that figure may well not account for all their black-market revenue. They have tracked 560 vessels involved in “ghost fleet” smuggling.
You might be surprised to learn that some of the Iranian regime’s vast black-market oil revenue has gone to purchase . . . real estate in London. From a Bloomberg report in January:
On a tree-lined street in north London, known as “Billionaire’s Row,” a clutch of mostly empty mansions sit behind tall hedges and blacked-out gates. As school children wander by, private guards in dark SUVs patrol outside.
Behind the facades of these luxury homes on The Bishops Avenue lies a network stretching from Tehran to Dubai and Frankfurt. The ultimate ownership traces back, through layers of shell companies, to one of the most powerful men in the Middle East: Mojtaba Khamenei, the second-eldest son of Iran’s Supreme Leader.
The people said that while the younger Khamenei refrains from putting assets in his own name, he has been directly involved in the deals, some of which stretch back at least as far as 2011.
You may have noticed that the younger Khamenei has since gotten a promotion, becoming Supreme Aytollah Nepo Baby:
His financial power has embraced everything from Persian Gulf shipping to Swiss bank accounts and British luxury property worth in excess of £100 million ($138 million), say the people, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution or because they’re not authorized to speak publicly. Together, the web of firms has helped Khamenei to channel funds — by some estimates in the billions of dollars — into Western markets, despite US sanctions imposed on him in 2019.
That includes prime real estate — one house cost £33.7 million when it was bought in 2014 — in several of London’s most exclusive neighborhoods, a villa in an area dubbed the “Beverly Hills of Dubai” and upscale European hotels from Frankfurt to Mallorca. Funds for the transactions have been routed through accounts at banks in the UK, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the United Arab Emirates, according to documents seen by Bloomberg and people familiar with the matter. The funds originate primarily from Iranian oil sales, the people said.
Feels like some prime targets for a good old-fashioned asset seizure, doesn’t it? Why is there never a cop around when you really need some civil asset forfeiture?
ADDENDUM: Over in that other Washington publication, a look at how the Trump administration is deeply invested in the outcome of the April 12 Hungarian election:
If, two decades ago, you had predicted that the prime minister of the 54th-largest economy in the world (two spots behind Angola) would speak at Conservative Political Action Conference gatherings at least six times — five times hosting it in his home capital! — and his reelection would be a high priority for a Republican president, people would have checked you for a concussion.
And yet a handful of American conservatives hold Orban in wildly overinflated esteem. Steve King, a former Iowa Republican congressman who was never a contender for the sharpest knife in the drawer, once contended, “History will record PM Orban the Winston Churchill of Western Civilization.” (My National Review colleague Jay Nordlinger observed that the “Winston Churchill of Western Civilization” really ought to be . . . you know, Churchill.)