AP News52%
Live updates: Iran threatens to attack Middle East electrical plants powering US bases 6%
By Bridget Brown0% Lorian Belanger0% Patrick Quinn0% Hrvoje Hranjski0% Jon Gambrell56% Samy Magdy0% Vladimir Isachenkov0% Natalie Melzer0% Bassem Mroue0% THE ASSOCIATED PRESS74%
3/23/2026, 12:26:02 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 18 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Begging the Question, and Red Herring, with Appeal to Emotion as the most egregious example at 16.8% saturation with 268 hits. Analysis detected 908 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,592 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 22.5% and a BS Rank of 6% (15,822 of 16,813 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 94.10% of the article peer group.
Major developments we’re following:
Iran warned Monday it will strike electricity plants across the Middle East if U.S.
President Donald Trump follows through on his threat to bomb power stations in the Islamic Republic, and threatened to mine the “entire Persian Gulf.”
The threat puts at risk both electrical supplies and water in the Gulf Arab states.
Oil prices remained stubbornly high in early trading, with the price of Brent crude, the international standard, at around $112 a barrel, up nearly 55% since Israel and the U.S. started the war on Feb. 28 by attacking Iran.
In his first one-on-one interview since the war started, Adm.
Cooper said the campaign against Iran is “ahead or on plan” and that the U.S. and Israel were targeting infrastructure and manufacturing facilities to destroy Iran’s capabilities to rebuild its military.
The death toll from the war has risen to more than 1,500 people in Iran, more than 1,000 people in Lebanon, 15 in Israel and 13 U.S. military members, as well as a number of civilians on land and sea in the Gulf region.
Millions of people in Lebanon and Iran have been displaced.
Associated Press journalists heard explosions across multiple points in Iran’s capital, Tehran, on Monday afternoon.
It wasn’t immediately clear what was hit.
The Kremlin said Monday that any U.S. strikes on Iran’s Russia-built nuclear power plant could trigger “irreparable” consequences.
Asked about President Donald Trump’s warning to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if it doesn’t fully open the Strait of Hormuz, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the “catastrophically tense” situation in the region could only be settled by political and diplomatic means.
Peskov warned that any strikes on nuclear facilities would be “extremely dangerous and fraught with possibly irreparable consequences,” adding that Russia has “conveyed relevant signals” to the U.S.
Ofer “Poshko” Moskovitz was killed on Sunday in Misgav Am, a northern community on the border with Lebanon.
The army said Monday that following an examination it determined that Moskovitz was hit by Israeli artillery fire due to “operational errors,” including directing the fire “at an incorrect angle” and not following protocol.
“As a result, five artillery shells were fired at the Misgav Am ridge instead of toward the enemy target,” the army said in a statement.
It expressed regret over the incident, which it described as “very severe.”
“The deliberate destruction of infrastructure in Lebanon represents a blatant Israeli policy of collective punishment,” the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a Monday statement.
It criticized Israel’s “systemic and deliberate” strikes, including on bridges on the Litani River in south Lebanon.
The wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Washington early Monday morning to take part in a meeting of first spouses from dozens of countries organized by first lady Melania Trump.
According to the prime minister’s office, Netanyahu will be in the states for two or three days and is expected to return to Israel immediately afterwards.
The White House said the meeting of first spouses will focus on supporting children through the “safe and innovative use of technology.”
An Israeli airstrike has destroyed another bridge on the Litani River in south Lebanon.
The strike on the bridge Monday in the southern village of Qaaqaaiyet al-Jisr cut a main link between the southern city of Nabatiyeh and al-Hujair valley region farther south.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency gave no further details about the latest strike.
On Sunday, Israel struck the Qasmiyeh bridge near the southern port city of Tyre.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun called Israel’s new targeting of bridges in the south “a prelude to a ground invasion.”
Iran’s Defense Council threatened Monday to deploy naval mines across the “entire Persian Gulf” if a land invasion happens.
The council issued the statement as concern in Tehran grows about the potential arrival of U.S.
Marines to the region.
“Any attempt by the enemy to target Iran’s coasts or islands will, naturally and in accordance with established military practice, lead to the mining of all access routes ... in the Persian Gulf and along the coasts,” the council said.
The U.S. has been trying to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, to energy shipments.
The Marines could come ashore to seize either islands or territory in Iran to support that mission.
Israel also has suggested a ground operation could take part in the war.
A senior United Nations official said the war in the Middle East has “far reaching” impact on millions of people particularly in developing countries in Asia and Africa.
In a Monday statement, Jorge Moreira da Silva, executive director of the U.N.
Office for Project Services, detailed the ripple effects of the war, now in its fourth week, including “exponential price hikes in oil, fuel and gas.”
“Our world is the most violent it has been since the Second World War,” he said.
He warned that the number of hungry people is likely to increase by tens of millions over the course of the year, as the widening war threatens remittance flows.
The war also displaced 3.2 million people in Iran and 1 million in Lebanon, he said.
He called for diplomacy to end the conflict, saying: “There is no military solution.”
As Trump’s 48-hour deadline to bomb power-generation sites in Iran over the opening of the Strait of Hormuz approaches, there are several electrical sites that could be targets in the Islamic Republic.
Some 80% of all power generated in Iran is created at plants powered by natural gas.
Those plants have continued working, even after Israel last week bombed Iran’s South Pars offshore natural gas field in the Persian Gulf.
Among the top natural gas plants are Damavand Power Plant, Shahid Salimi Neka Power Plant and Shahid Rajaee Power Plant – all around Iran’s capital, Tehran.
Knocking those plants offline could affect businesses and homes in Tehran, as well as halt gas stations and other crucial sites.
An adviser to the UAE has criticized Arab and Islamic organizations’ response to Iran’s continued attacks in the Arab Gulf countries.
“Where are the joint Arab and Islamic labor institutions,” Anwar Gargash said in a social media post Monday, naming the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
Gargash, who is a former state minister for foreign affairs, said it will be “unacceptable” after the war to talk about “the decline of the Arab and Islamic role or to criticize the American and Western presence” in the Gulf region which hosts U.S. and Western bases.
The UAE, which has close ties with Israel and the U.S., has been the hardest hit by Iranian missiles and drones since the war in the Middle East began on Feb.
28.
After Iran threatened power plants across the Mideast, news outlets published a list of such facilities, including the United Arab Emirates’ nuclear power plant.
The report by the semiofficial Fars news agency, close to its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, appeared to be an indirect threat to the sites, including desalination plants in the Middle East.
The list also included the UAE’s Barakah nuclear power plant, which has four reactors out in the western deserts of the country near its border with Saudi Arabia.
The judiciary’s Mizan news agency also published the list.
The threat by Tehran puts at risk both electrical supplies and water in the Gulf Arab states, particularly as the desert nations commingle their power stations with desalination plants crucial for supplying drinking water.
Trump’s self-declared 48-hour deadline expires just before midnight GMT Tuesday, further raising the stakes of the ongoing war with Iran that has disrupted global energy supplies, sending natural gas and gasoline prices soaring
Israel’s military warned Monday morning it detected missile launches from Iran and said air defenses were targeting the incoming fire.
As U.S.
President Donald Trump’s deadline on opening the Strait of Hormuz approaches, Iran on Monday threatened to attack Mideast electrical plants powering American military bases.
The statement from Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard marks the latest attempt by Tehran to try and explain its attacks on the Gulf Arab countries.
Iranian state television read out the statement on air Monday morning.
“What we have done is to announce our decision that if the power plants are attacked, Iran will retaliate by targeting the power plants of the occupying regime and the power plants of regional countries that supply electricity to US bases, as well as the economic, industrial and energy infrastructures in which Americans have shares,” the statement said, referring to Israel as an “occupying regime.”
It added: “Do not doubt that we will do this.”
Trump warned early Sunday morning that the U.S. will target Iranian power plants in 48 hours if the strait remains effectively closed by Iranian fire on shipping.
U.S.
President Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social website early Monday: “PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH, TO PUT IT MILDLY!!!”
An Indian national living in the United Arab Emirates was hurt by falling shrapnel after the interception of a ballistic missile over an industrial area near Al Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi, authorities said Monday.
Saudi Arabia’s Defense Ministry said Monday it intercepted a ballistic missile targeting the kingdom’s capital, Riyadh, while another struck an “uninhabited area.”
The UAE said its air defenses were working to intercept incoming missiles from Iran early Monday, without elaborating.
Both Bahrain and Kuwait sounded missile alerts early Monday over incoming Iranian fire, though it wasn’t clear if there was any immediate damage from the barrages.
Analysis
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