Parsing President Trump’s power plants attack threats

Ecaterina MAȚOI

As of March 22^nd, 2026, the US and Israel continue to bomb multiple targets in Iran, with ongoing efforts to mobilize greater resources to support their war effort, amid a yet unclear end goal and competing or circular declarations.

The correction of media reports hinting initially at Israel’s unilateral decision to bomb energy infrastructure, subsequently characterized as some form of cooperation, was followed by official statements at Washington, according to which the US pursues different goals than Israel. President Donald Trump’s intermittent claims on ending the war, contradicted by the large mobilization of resources, can amount, when compared to previous false flags carried out by the US government in the wake of Iran’s attack, to a false flag meant to bridge the depletion of armament until new supplies arrive.

Iran’s retaliation appears to have increased in significance, not necessarily due to scale, but cumulative effect of destroyed American infrastructure in the region, and low ammunition supplies the US and Israel may be confronted with on short-term. The hypothesis of temporary low ammunition is supported by the consequential Iranian attacks on Tel Aviv, Arad and Dimona, but also by the desperate American calls to traditional war allies from Western Europe to join the conflict. Furthermore, Russian Federation’s tactical testing of US preparedness, potentially triggering Washington’s recent exercise involving the Boeing E-6B Mercury “Doomsday” airplane as a show of force, underlines the delicate position the US finds itself in, as the Iranian war drags on and the US economy is crippled by a potentially uncurable addiction to oil dominance, and financial bubbles, the last one being that of private credit.

Besides systematic failures to uphold rules of engagement, even in an undeclared war, such as bombardment of civilians or schools, the US has failed to achieve a quick victory, be it equated to regime change, degradation of nuclear or missile capabilities, or seizure of oil and gas infrastructure. It was the case in Afghanistan and Iraq as well, but the escalation in war against Iran gradually transforms highly-financialized Persian Gulf economies in a conflict spiral whose prevention was the very foundation of cooperation between regional Arab countries and the US.

Region’s security paradigm, based on US political and military guarantees is being transformed by at least two tendencies: the clear breach of Persian Gulf Arab states’ security, and the US renewed bid to hegemonically control world’s oil and gas reserves, along energy flows. From the perspective of Israel’s regional hegemony bid, and an alleged transfer of power from Washington to Tel Aviv, both tendencies are less critical: they do not significantly impact the envisioned transfer of power. However, the American threats to attack Iranian power plants represents an escalation, that besides the risk of retaliation by Iran with attacks on regional power and desalination plants connected to Americans, which may include most of the regional infrastructure, signalize an yet another massive escalation. In extending the list of potential target types, the US subjects large regional infrastructure endeavors to financial and security strains, and pushes regional countries to speed up the adoption of alternative security cooperation frameworks.

From this perspective, the presence of Turkish security and defense personnel in the Qatari helicopter that crashed on March 22^nd, 2026, represents a clear indication of security cooperation diversification in the Persian Gulf, besides the Saudi-Pakistani recent defense pact. Consequently, the breach of security for rich Persian Gulf Arab states, despite large American military bases and very large purchases of American defense equipment, is likely to trigger a domino effect among countries that relied solely on American guarantees.

The American strive, under President Trump, to reassert hegemony through control over fossil energy supply, is both outdated and, in the case of Persian Gulf countries, sensible, as most countries regained sovereignty over their hydrocarbon resources in the second part of 20^th century, and generate revenue and reinvest it basically in the USD financial system, although today main markets are in Asia. The increasing number of political conditions, tariffs, as well as rising prices, identify projects similar to Saudi Vision 2030 as locked between Western designs, Asian revenues, and an envisioned regional peace whose realization appears to require fundamental concessions from the Arab states. From this perspective, the imperative of escalating the war to include energy infrastructure by the US, especially in the absence of a plausible end-goal, burdens already globally-leading projects in terms of costs with unpredictable additional amounts and delays, as well as indirect security expenditures should regional states continue the acceleration of security policy diversification.

The US has increased its stress-tests on global peace from at least 2001, when the era of unilateral military interventions, and infringements of sovereign territory of other countries, emerged. At the beginning, justification of such action was justified, but, as the tolerance for this type of breaches was constructed, justification lost importance. While the American escalation in the war waged on Iran may inspire intimidation, fear and anxiety, to actors relying on American guarantees, or holding assets that are susceptible to predatory confiscation (territory, financial means, oil and gas primarily), parts of the world are scaling up multidimensional defense. It is the case of Denmark, that recently announced readiness to confront a potential invasion, and prepared by transferring blood, explosives and ammunition to island, the Russian Federation, who increasingly confirms the otherwise improbable cooperation with Iran, China, and others.

While US and any other states’ national interests remain central to global cooperation, the stress imposed by the US on the international relations system becomes unpredictable and implicitly expensive. Assuming that the US might achieve any sort of victory in Iran, the importance of such an outcome in the contemporary global confrontation is limited by its very definition. There is no global mandate awarded to the US to bomb Iran, and much less so its power plants. Iranian population was already impacted by acute needs, amassed through decades of sanctions, and aggravated by draughts or defense imperatives associated to non-alignment. Furthermore, the goal pursued through bombing power plants was not clearly identified: the Iranian military will certainly not allow American military ships, or cargo ships with increased risk of carrying arms and munitions to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, as declared, unless a comprehensive peace plan is reached.

The increasingly stated and adopted American disconnect from human values and respect for past achievements, obtained through rules-based cooperation, rushes countries into more or less obvious choices, such as China, and into breaking cooperation barriers that were otherwise impossible. The US is certainly not prepared to fully capitalize on this escalation: from a proficiency perspective, the US is likely not able to militarily degrade Iran’s resistance resources, even if disrupting power generation. The limitations of warfare, even based on AI, include production costs for weapons and ammunition, and an underlying legitimacy crisis among others.

Most of the Iranian population had not waited for American “liberation”, and there were no systematic expectations from the Iranian society to receive new power plants from the US. In fact, there is a global consensus for transitioning as soon as possible to renewable energy generation, that isolates the American bid to repeat history from 20^th century. China leads in redefining the global transition to renewable energy, and the adoption is likely to accelerate, as the US prepares to impose a renewed control layer between the world and energy.

Future research is required in order to establish whether the US dominance is really on the brink of collapse, and depends for survival on war and clearly unnecessary escalations, or whether the power struggle between the Republicans and Democrats, that resembles a confrontation of values but leads to excesses in both domestic and foreign policies, is an acceptable product that the international community has to accommodate on long term.

Cover image credit: Dean Zhang via Unsplash.

About the author: Ecaterina MAȚOI is the President of Strategic Dialogue for Global Affairs Initiative