The Most Consequential Hours of the War: Trump Threatens to Erase a Civilization

WASHINGTON — Hours before President Donald Trump’s self-imposed 8 p.m. Eastern deadline for Iran to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the United States launched airstrikes on Kharg Island, Iran’s major oil export hub — a deliberate signal that the most sweeping and destructive wave of attacks in the six-week-old campaign is imminent.

The attack was launched around 12 hours before Trump’s deadline, and the United States hit more than 50 military targets on the island, according to military officials. The island, to which Iran pumps almost all of its crude production through underwater pipelines for export, absorbed multiple missile impacts, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr News agency. Responsible for approximately 90 percent of Iran’s crude oil exports, Kharg Island has become a flash point in the widening conflict, and Tuesday’s bombardment marked the second time the United States has targeted the island since the war began.

Then came the gravest threat of the conflict. “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that he hopes the outcome could still change if “different, smarter, and less radicalized” leaders of Iran prevail. “We will find out tonight,” he wrote, “one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”

The strikes on Kharg represent a calculated escalation — targeting not soldiers on a battlefield but the financial architecture sustaining the regime itself. Iran earned $53 billion in net oil export revenues in 2025, around 11 percent of the country’s annual gross domestic product, according to one analyst cited by NBC News. The island serves as the physical hub enabling Iranian crude exports and the primary gateway for those revenues — and, as one researcher noted, allows Iran to sustain crude sales despite United States sanctions, which “undermines a key United States foreign policy tool.” Trump had telegraphed this pressure campaign for weeks and, remarkably, had considered it for decades. In a 1988 interview in which he expressed a desire to one day be president, he said he would be “harsh on Iran” and warned, “One bullet shot at one of our men or ships and I’d do a number on Kharg Island.”

The strikes came on the heels of a stunning display of American multi-domain military power that reframed the conflict’s strategic narrative. Late last week, an American F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down by Iranian forces, with the two-person crew ejecting into hostile territory. The pilot was rescued by two military helicopters on the day of the shootdown, but the second crew member — a weapons systems officer, a colonel — remained missing in Iran’s mountainous terrain.

Before locating the airman, the Central Intelligence Agency launched a deception campaign, spreading word inside Iran that United States forces had already found him and were moving him on the ground for extraction. While the deception was underway, the agency used its capabilities to track the crew member to a mountain crevice. The CIA shared his exact location with the Pentagon and the White House, and the president ordered an immediate rescue mission with the agency continuing to provide real-time intelligence, CBS News reported.

The officer had been injured “quite badly” and was stranded in an area “teeming with terrorists,” far from where the pilot had come down, CBS News reported. He followed his training — scaling cliff faces, treating his own wounds, and climbing toward higher altitude to evade capture. When he was finally able to access his emergency transponder, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “his first message was simple and it was powerful — he sent a message, ‘God is good.’”

The United States sent over 150 aircraft to beat back Iranian forces in the race to find the missing officer. Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine described a close-in gunfight in which drones, A-10 jets, and other aircraft were “violently suppressing and engaging the enemy” to keep them away from the downed officer and allow the rescue force into the objective area. One A-10 pilot took fire and continued the mission before determining his aircraft was unlandable; he flew it into friendly airspace, ejected, and was quickly recovered. Two C-130 transport aircraft that became stuck at an abandoned airstrip during the operation were deliberately destroyed by United States forces to prevent them from falling into enemy hands.

Trump called it “the first time in military memory that two United States pilots have been rescued, separately, deep in enemy territory.”

The operation was a demonstration of multi-domain dominance — conventional airpower, special operations, and intelligence tradecraft fused in real time over hostile territory — and it arrived at a moment the White House clearly intends to leverage.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard warned it would “deprive the United States and its allies of the region’s oil and gas for years” if Trump follows through on his threats. Officials called on young Iranians to form human chains around power plants. Iran’s United Nations mission called Trump’s infrastructure threats “direct and public incitement to terrorise civilians and clear evidence of intent to commit war crime.” Human rights experts, including former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth, said Trump was “openly threatening collective punishment, targeting not the Iranian military but the Iranian people,” which constitutes a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, NBC News reported.