A view of the damaged B1 bridge, a day after it was destroyed by an airstrike, on April 3, 2026, west of Tehran in Karaj, Iran. | Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

For someone who claims to be unconcerned about the Strait of Hormuz , President Donald Trump seems increasingly desperate to open it.

In a Truth Social post over the weekend that was extreme even by his standards, Trump instructed Iran to “open the fuckin’ strait” by this Tuesday or he would make good on earlier threats to destroy bridges and power plants across the country. He has threatened attacks against Iran’s desalination plants and the oil export facility on Kharg Island as well.

Asked Monday by reporters at the White House whether this would constitute a war crime, Trump replied that the Iranian leaders who had killed “45,000 people in the last month” were “animals.”

Trump’s renewed threats to target Iranian infrastructure that supplies civilians with basic necessities like power and water, and his increasingly harsh rhetoric — like…