Donald Trump’s threat of a scorched-earth strategy to send Iran “back to the Stone Age” risks mutually assured destruction across the Gulf region, according to Middle East analysts and former officials.
Tehran is willing and able to respond in kind to attacks on industry and infrastructure against Western allies, experts believe, which could leave damage that takes years to repair.
US-Israeli strikes against industrial targets appear to be escalating already, as Trump continues to threaten total destruction of Iran’s energy network, which legal experts warn would be a war crime.
Two of Iran’s major steelworks have been shut down following attacks over the past week, crippling an industry that is a symbol of national pride as well as a leading employer and source of export revenue.
Israeli missiles have destroyed pharmaceutical and medical centres, such as the Tofigh Daru factory – which produced drugs, including cancer treatments, that Iran has struggled to procure under sanctions – and the century-old Pasteur Institute for medical research.
Damage to civilian infrastructure is rapidly mounting. A strike on Thursday destroyed the Tehran-Karaj highway described as the Middle East’s highest bridge. Trump boasted in a post on Truth Social: “The biggest bridge in Iran comes tumbling down, never to be used again — Much more to follow!”
A source in Tehran told The i Paper a telecommunications antenna near their home was bombed the same day.
Fars News reports the B1 Bridge in Karaj, among Iran's tallest, was hit. pic.twitter.com/bY6SPeA9eq
— Faytuks Network (@FaytuksNetwork) April 2, 2026Israeli media reported this week that the Israeli military had switched to “economic” targets, citing army sources, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is pressing the US for broader attacks against Iranian infrastructure.
Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, head of the UK-based Bourse & Bazaar Foundation think-tank, and a specialist on Iran’s economy and politics, said Trump’s speech on Wednesday night threatening to send the country back to a pre-industrial era “was describing what is already happening”.
Recent attacks may have set back some industries for years and Iran will seek to exact a similar cost in retaliation, he said. “Expanding targets to include civilian facilities… will certainly lead to Iranian retaliation against similar targets across the region, but it also means that the war is going to leave much deeper scars on Iran and on the region,” he said. “We are in a race to the bottom.”
Climbing the escalation ladder
The Iranian military said on Thursday that it had retaliated for attacks on steel plants, including through strikes on metalworks in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, and “the next response will be much more painful”.
Tehran has shown the ability to calibrate attacks and leave scope for further steps up the escalation ladder, said Dr Dina Esfandiary, a Gulf security expert and Middle East lead at Bloomberg Geoeconomics.
After Israel attacked the South Pars gas field on 18 March, Iran carried out a series of strikes on Gulf energy sites that caused serious damage, including to the world’s largest liquified natural gas complex at Ras Laffan, Qatar.
“Prior to the Israeli attack on South Pars, Iran was hitting regional energy infrastructure but just to sabotage, and take it offline temporarily,” she said. “After the attack, Iran hit the Qataris, and the Ras Laffan facility, to destroy.”
She added: “If Trump bombs Iran the way he outlines, Iran is likely to do something very similar to the Arab states.”
Despite a month-long campaign against energy sites across the Gulf, Iran retains the capacity to do more serious damage, said Batmanghelidj.
The Sorek desalination plant in Rishon LeZion, Israel. Hitting desalination plants across the region would imperil human survival in the cities of the Middle East (Photo: Dan Balilty/AP)“Iran may have targeted an area of a facility that is related to one function, or maybe it has taken out one production line within a petrochemical plant,” he said. “There is certainly the opportunity to hit those targets again and increase the damage to push more production offline.”
Giorgio Cafiero, head of the Gulf State Analytics risk consultancy, noted that Iran could also strike Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu pipeline that has become a leading alternative route for oil supplies since Iran’s de facto closure of the Hormuz Strait, or drawing the Yemeni Houthi militants into attacks on Red Sea shipping.
“If that scenario unfolds, Saudi Arabia will be severely squeezed economically, and disruption to the global economy will reach a much higher level,” he said.
But the most devastating move would be to attack desalination plants that supply most or all of the clean water supply to Gulf states.
“If the desalination plants are taken out, human survival in the big Gulf cities will be under threat,” the analyst said.
Several attacks on these critical facilities have already occurred during the war.
Iran accused the US of bombing a desalination plant on its Qeshm island on 7 March, which is no longer functioning. The following day, Bahrain reported an Iranian drone strike on one of its own water purification centres.
Jebel Ali Port in Dubai, United Arab Emirates last month after it was hit by Iran (Photo: Planet Labs PBC via AP)Trump dismays Gulf
Mahdi Guloom, a Bahraini geopolitics analyst at the Observer Research Foundation Middle East, who previously served in Bahrain’s government, said Trump’s campaign against Iran had failed to factor in the security of Gulf allies, and his latest announcement left the countries in even greater danger.
“This latest messaging from Trump is in line with this lack of fair due towards how such an escalation would impact American allies,” he said, listing targets of Iran’s attacks that include airports, homes and universities.
Guloom added that he expected Iranian attacks on civilian targets “will likely intensify” if the US and Israel escalate their assault.
A European former diplomat who has been closely involved in talks with Iran said that Trump following through on his threat to target Iran’s infrastructure would be a “disaster” for the region that could draw a reciprocal “scorched earth reaction” towards Gulf states.
The barrage from Iran has created splits among the Gulf states, with the UAE and Saudi Arabia said to be supporting moves to weaken the Iranian regime, while Oman and Qatar have pressed for a ceasefire as soon as possible.
But the countries are united in disappointment at the perceived failure of the US to provide security despite hosting US bases and entering into security agreements with Washington, said Cafiero.
“All of the Gulf countries have seen that the US has failed to serve as an effective and reliable security guarantor,” he said. “Some of them lobbied Trump not to bomb Iran, but he disregarded their concerns, and they are suffering as a consequence.”
Cafiero predicts that after the war, battered and beleagured Gulf states will look elsewhere for protection.
“I think they will look to diversify their defence and security alliances and partnerships, not to replace the US as a security guarantor, but to try to minimise the extent to which they’re so dependent on Washington – and strengthen their defence ties with Turkey, France, China and perhaps Russia,” he said.
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