The Electric War: What Happens If Trump Turns Out Iran’s Lights?

Donald Trump has threatened to destroy Iran’s power plants to force a deal. Tehran has warned that retaliation could reach the Gulf’s water supplies, energy installations and American bases. The danger is a war that devastates the systems sustaining civilian life without settling the dispute that started it.

Donald Trump described the destruction of Iran’s electricity supply in a single sentence. “Within one day, all of their power plants would be gone,” he said on July 28. He acknowledged what that would mean for “about 91 million people without power, without bridges”, then explained why he was threatening it: “They know I’m going to do that if they don’t make a deal.” The White House published the remarks.

Almost two months later, in the green and gold chamber of the United Nations, Trump offered Iran a choice between an agreement that would allow it to rebuild and the prospect that he would “annihilate the Islamic Republic”. That language raised fears of nuclear escalation, although it did not establish an intention to use nuclear weapons. His threat against the electricity system required no interpretation. He had identified the targets, described the deprivation and attached both to his demand for an agreement.

Carrying out the threat would be a choice, not an inevitability. Negotiations, continued military pressure and a prolonged stalemate remain possible. But Trump’s words invite a question that American military superiority cannot answer: would destroying the power plants bring the agreement closer, or leave Washington fighting a larger war over the same demands?

Iran has warned that attacks on the infrastructure sustaining its society could bring retaliation against the infrastructure sustaining its neighbours. Across the Gulf, electricity supports drinking-water production, energy exports, hospitals, communications and the daily operation of cities. An attempt to coerce Tehran could put those systems at risk, with consequences reaching far beyond the countries under attack.

Washington has demonstrated its capacity to bomb Iran, destroy installations, kill commanders and impose a blockade. It has not demonstrated that those instruments can secure the political settlement it seeks. Occupation would require an altogether different commitment of forces, casualties and time in a country larger than Iraq, bounded by mountains and deserts. Nothing in Washington’s present posture suggests an appetite for that undertaking.

Nor has American naval power restored normal commerce through the Strait of Hormuz. On the weekend before Trump’s UN address, 17 commodity vessels were recorded passing through the waterway, against a pre-war average of about 125 large commercial vessels a day. Some traffic continued through improvised arrangements or without normal transponder signals. Visible movements nevertheless remained a fraction of their former level.

Attacking electricity would increase the damage America could inflict. Whether it would increase the concessions America could obtain is a different matter.

What bombing is supposed to achieve

A concession, surrender and regime change are different measures of success. A campaign that fails to overthrow a government might still secure a narrower agreement; a campaign that destroys military installations might achieve neither. Any assessment of bombing must begin with the political result it is supposed to produce.

Robert A. Pape’s Bombing to Win, published in 1996, examined more than 30 strategic air campaigns through this problem of coercion. Central to his analysis was the distinction between denying an opponent the means to achieve its military objectives and punishing its society until the costs became intolerable.

Denial attacks the enemy’s strategy. Punishment seeks to alter its calculations through economic destruction and civilian suffering. Pape found punishment considerably less reliable. Governments did not consistently yield as the devastation mounted, confounding the expectation that enough suffering would eventually force a concession.

Trump’s remarks place Iran’s electricity system within that argument. His threat explicitly connects the deprivation of millions of people to the demand for a deal. Its effects would spread through services whose dependence on power becomes most apparent when it disappears.

Water must be pumped and treated. Sewage systems need to function. Hospitals can turn to generators, but their endurance depends on fuel, maintenance and supplies. Refrigeration protects food and medicines; telecommunications support emergency services and commerce. Prolonged disruption reaches banking, transport, manufacturing and fuel distribution. Darkness is the familiar image of a blackout, but much of the suffering develops afterwards.

History offers repeated warnings against assuming that this suffering will produce the desired political instruction. Bombing German cities did not by itself secure surrender. Attacks on North Vietnamese infrastructure did not bring the government’s collapse. Iraq’s electricity system was devastated in 1991, yet Saddam Hussein survived. None of these examples settles the outcome of a different campaign, but each challenges the equation of physical destruction with political control.

Pape’s conclusions have been contested, including by scholars who regard his division between denial and punishment as too sharp. The question remains unavoidable: how does the damage become a concession? Governments may consider surrender more dangerous than continued suffering. Military institutions may retain protection while civilians absorb deprivation. People under attack may blame the attacker, rally to the state or have little ability to influence its decisions.

Iran adds another difficulty. Tehran has threatened to answer the destruction of its own infrastructure by extending the damage across the Gulf.

The Gulf within range

In August, Iranian officials warned Gulf governments that continued American attacks could expose regional oil fields, power grids, water systems and transport networks to Iranian strikes. Gulf governments pressed Washington for restraint, confronting the possibility that decisions by their principal security partner could endanger their own economic survival.

Seyed Mohammad Marandi of Tehran University has expressed the Iranian argument particularly starkly. A former adviser to Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, he is neither an official government spokesman nor a military commander. His warning nevertheless sets out a clear rationale: if Washington attacks the infrastructure supporting Iranian civilian life, neighbouring states should not expect their equivalent systems to remain untouched.

That warning encompasses power stations, ports, oil and gas installations, and desalination. Its implications extend beyond whether ships can pass through Hormuz. If production and processing facilities suffer lasting damage, reopening the waterway will not restore the cargoes those facilities once supplied.

At Qatar’s Ras Laffan energy complex, this distinction has already become concrete. Iranian strikes disabled facilities representing about 17 per cent of the country’s LNG capacity. QatarEnergy has said repairs to the damaged LNG trains could take as long as three years. The consequences extend across years of production and export contracts: a loss measured not just in the installations struck, but in the cargoes they will be unable to supply.

Chas Freeman, the former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and former assistant secretary of defence, identifies a related problem in the region’s security arrangements. American bases were established as assurances of protection. When used to wage war against Iran, they may also give Tehran a reason to attack their hosts.

Gulf rulers can consequently seek American protection and press Washington for restraint at the same time. They depend on a security relationship whose use in a particular war could expose the very systems it is meant to protect.

The cities that manufacture water

Along the Gulf coast, towers, motorways and air-conditioned buildings testify to an extraordinary transformation of the physical environment. Less visible is the continuous work that makes this concentration of people possible: producing electricity, treating seawater and delivering it to homes. Behind a running tap lies an industrial process that must keep working.

Qatar obtains about 99 per cent of its drinking water from desalination. In Bahrain, the figure is above 90 per cent; in Kuwait, around 90 per cent; in Oman, about 86 per cent; and in Saudi Arabia, roughly 70 per cent. An electricity crisis therefore reaches beyond lighting and cooling into the production and distribution of water itself.

A World Bank study found that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait historically held only around three to five days of clean water in tanks and distribution systems if supplies were interrupted. In several other Gulf states, normal storage amounted to roughly a day. Subsequent investment in strategic reserves means these figures are not present-day countdowns. They help explain, however, why governments have devoted such attention to water storage and security.

The severity of an interruption would depend on which facilities were hit and what remained operational. But unlike many industrial outputs, water cannot be forgone for long. A household can postpone a purchase or a journey; it cannot indefinitely postpone drinking, cooking or washing.

That dependence gives the Iranian warning its force. It also connects infrastructure to political authority. The Gulf monarchies’ durability rests partly on their ability to deliver security and material provision, a relationship shaped by the region’s history and transformed by its energy wealth.

The political bargain beneath the prosperity

Britain did not invent every Gulf dynasty or simply install all the monarchies that survive today. Some ruling families predate formal British protection. Saudi Arabia is a particularly important distinction: Ibn Saud assembled his kingdom principally through conquest, defeating rivals and taking the Hijaz rather than being placed on a throne by London.

Across much of the southern Gulf, British naval predominance nevertheless helped shape the political order. Coastal rulers entered successive nineteenth-century treaties intended to secure maritime communications and British commerce. Their territories became known as the Protected States, a description encompassing both the security arrangement and the limits on their external independence.

The map that followed British withdrawal was negotiated rather than inevitable. In 1968, nine Protected States remained. Within four years they had become Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, after discussions among rulers and British officials over federation and separate statehood.

Oil and gas transformed the resources available to these governments. Ruling families that had governed relatively poor coastal territories acquired command over enormous revenues. Their states developed differently: Kuwait established a parliamentary tradition absent elsewhere, while Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain followed distinct political courses. Ultimate executive authority remained hereditary, with security institutions and economic power closely associated with ruling dynasties.

The resulting order, sometimes described as the family-state, has proved durable through wars, revolutions, Arab nationalism, Islamism and the Arab Spring. Hydrocarbon revenues supported public employment, services, infrastructure, subsidised energy and welfare, while citizens paid comparatively little direct taxation. Material provision and political authority became closely bound together.

An infrastructure war would test this arrangement at its most practical level. Export revenues must arrive, electricity and water remain available, and ports bring in food and goods. Severe disruption could damage the relationship between state and society without immediately threatening a ruling family’s hold on office.

Much of the work sustaining these economies is performed by expatriates, who account for more than 80 per cent of Qatar’s residents. Engineers, nurses, technicians, construction workers and service staff occupy very different economic positions, but their collective presence is essential. A prolonged crisis could affect the availability of people needed to operate services and make repairs, while international businesses reconsidered the safety of their personnel.

A monarchy need not fall for its country to suffer lasting harm. Investment can leave, services deteriorate and workers become harder to retain, even while the government remains firmly in control.

Beyond the shipping lane

Before the war, Hormuz carried about a fifth of global LNG trade, overwhelmingly supplied by Qatar. EIA figures for 2024 show that 83 per cent of the LNG passing through the Strait went to Asian markets. China, India and South Korea together received more than half.

Since the February closure, the EIA estimates that roughly 20 per cent of normal global LNG supply has effectively been cut off, intensifying competition between Asian and European buyers for alternative cargoes. Oil has more scope for diversion through Saudi and Emirati pipelines that bypass Hormuz. Producers have also improvised expensive transfers between ships. Trade continues where alternatives can be found, but at greater cost and under continuing threat.

A wider campaign against generating stations, processing plants, export terminals, pipelines and pumping facilities would deepen shortages and extend their duration. Its effects would spread through ordinary economic activity. Higher oil prices raise the cost of diesel, aviation fuel, transport and petrochemicals. Higher gas prices affect electricity, industrial production and fertiliser. Freight and insurance costs reach importers; fuel and agricultural costs eventually reach food prices.

A conflict over installations on the Gulf coast would appear elsewhere as a more expensive journey, a reduced factory shift or a larger supermarket bill. Central banks would face the familiar difficulty of a supply shock: higher interest rates cannot repair a gas plant, but tolerating persistent inflation carries its own costs. Attempts to contain prices could compound the damage to employment and investment.

The burden would be uneven. Gulf energy trade has shifted heavily towards Asia, exposing China, India, Japan and South Korea to disruption. Poorer importing countries have less money to protect households and businesses through a prolonged price shock. Governments with no part in the decision to escalate could incur substantial costs.

Economic integration makes those consequences difficult to confine to the intended adversary. Powerful states have often imposed suffering abroad while keeping much of the immediate damage distant from their own economies. Energy and trading networks complicate that calculation: costs return through prices, production and the exposure of allies, even when the attacker’s territory remains untouched.

What would make the war end?

Gulf rulers have an immediate interest in preventing this wider destruction. Freeman argues that their experience will encourage greater accommodation with Tehran and a broader range of external partnerships. The extent of any realignment remains uncertain, but their pressure for restraint reflects a clear concern about damage that military protection may be unable to prevent or quickly repair.

Iran’s threatened retaliation offers no assurance of a better outcome. The ability to damage neighbouring states does not establish that doing so would bring Tehran security or the terms it seeks. Both governments may believe escalation strengthens their position, while underestimating the costs the other will endure or impose.

For Washington, the difficulty is finding a target whose destruction helps end the war rather than enlarging it. An attack on Iranian electricity could reach, through retaliation, into Gulf water supplies and energy installations whose restoration might take years. The damage would be real and enduring; the political return would remain uncertain.

An electric war could leave governments in place and their demands unresolved, while making civilian life more precarious across several countries. The lights could eventually come back on. The agreement for which they were extinguished might still be out of reach.