Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at U.S. threats to Iranian civilian infrastructure, White House support for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and war crimes allegations against Australia’s most decorated living soldier.
‘A Whole Civilization Will Die Tonight’
Who will blink first? U.S. President Donald Trump has given Tehran until 8 p.m. EDT on Tuesday to reach a cease-fire deal and reopen the Strait of Hormuz or else face devastating U.S. strikes on Iranian civilian infrastructure.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”
Trump has been ramping up his threats for several days. In an expletive-laden post on Sunday, he vowed to destroy every power plant and bridge in Iran—a move that legal experts and foreign governments warn could amount to war crimes. Deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure violate protections under the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, the United Nations Charter, and the Nuremberg Principles.
Still, many saw his comments about killing Iran’s entire civilization as reaching a new, even more alarming level of menace. Trump’s warning that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if a deal is not reached is “comparable to genocide,” said Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Tuesday. More than a dozen congressional Democrats have called for either impeaching Trump or invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office over his Iran threats.
Yet the White House maintains that such attacks are justified. “Iran hides military hardware in hospitals, in schools, in civilian neighborhoods for propaganda purposes in the most sick and despicable way,” Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday.
That same day, U.S. forces struck several targets on Iran’s Kharg Island, a critical oil export hub. One U.S. official told CNN that oil facilities were not targeted, and U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance stressed that the operation did not mark a “change in strategy” ahead of Trump’s Tuesday evening deadline.
Following the White House’s threats, Iran’s deputy minister for sports and youth, Alireza Rahimi, on Tuesday called on “all young people, athletes, artists, students, and university students and their professors” to form human chains around the country’s power plants. “More than 14 million proud Iranians have so far registered to sacrifice their lives to defend Iran,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X on Tuesday in reference to Rahimi’s message. “I too have been, am, and will remain devoted to giving my life for Iran.”
On Monday, Tehran also promised to retaliate against Washington’s allies in the Persian Gulf if U.S. forces implement Trump’s threat. “The subsequent phases of our offensive and retaliatory operations will be carried out much more crushingly and extensively,” Iranian military spokesperson Ebrahim Zolfaghari said.
Meanwhile, international leaders are racing to reach a cease-fire deal—with little success. The United States and Iran have worked with Pakistan and other regional mediators to trade peace proposals, though minimal progress has been made and no framework deal agreed to. Trump told Fox News on Tuesday that “8 p.m. is happening,” but he added that this could change if something concrete came out of negotiations.
Later on Tuesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif issued a plea on social media for the warring parties “to allow diplomacy to run its course.”
“Diplomatic efforts for peaceful settlement of the ongoing war in the Middle East are progressing steadily, strongly and powerfully with the potential to lead to substantive results in near future,” Sharif wrote. He asked for Trump to extend Tuesday’s deadline by two weeks, for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz as a “goodwill gesture,” and for all sides to observe a two-week cease-fire.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump has been made aware of the proposal. He has yet to respond.
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What We’re Following
Last-minute support. Vance traveled to Budapest on Tuesday to throw the Trump administration’s support behind Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban ahead of crucial parliamentary elections on Sunday. Local polling has opposition leader Peter Magyar in the lead; if Magyar were to win, he would upset 16 consecutive years of Orban rule and mark a major turning point for one of Europe’s most influential illiberal democracies.
Orban and Trump share similar ideologies. They are both far-right leaders who have championed nationalist, anti-immigrant policies; criticized European norms; and expressed pro-Kremlin sympathies in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Both leaders have also lovingly referred to each other as “black sheep” among Western nations.
On Tuesday, Vance leaned into those commonalities, going so far as to accuse the European Union of “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference that I have ever seen or ever even read about” against Orban “because they hate this guy.” Orban has also accused the EU of meddling in Hungary’s affairs. Although European leaders have repeatedly criticized Orban’s decision to withhold billions of euros worth of essential aid to Ukraine, they have stopped short of wading into Hungary’s election cycle.
Five counts of war crimes. Australian authorities arrested the country’s most decorated living soldier on Tuesday and charged him with five counts of war crimes related to the alleged killing of five civilians in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2012. Officials claim that Cpl. Ben Roberts-Smith, 47, shot or ordered his subordinates to kill unarmed individuals during his deployment in Afghanistan.
“It will be alleged the victims were not taking part in hostilities at the time of their alleged murder in Afghanistan,” Australian Federal Police commissioner Krissy Barrett said, adding that the victims were “detained, unarmed, and were under the control of ADF [Australian Defence Force] members when they were killed.” If convicted, Roberts-Smith could face five counts of life imprisonment.
The retired soldier was previously awarded several high military honors, including Australia’s Victoria Cross, for his actions in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2012. However, starting in 2018, reporting emerged alleging that Roberts-Smith had wrongfully killed several people while on duty, including an unarmed Afghan teenager as well as a handcuffed man who he first kicked off a cliff before ordering the man to be shot.
Roberts-Smith has consistently denied any wrongdoing despite credible evidence finding that members of Australia’s Special Air Service regiment, which Roberts-Smith was part of, had killed dozens of unarmed Afghan prisoners. During a defamation case in 2023, an Australian federal court ruled that allegations that Roberts-Smith was responsible for or complicit in the deaths of four detainees in Afghanistan were “substantially true.”
“Journey for peace.” The leader of Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party, Cheng Li-wun, arrived in China on Tuesday as part of what she called a “historic journey for peace.”
“The purpose of this visit to mainland China is precisely to show the world that it is not just Taiwan that unilaterally hopes for peace,” Cheng said before departing. She is the first Taiwanese opposition leader to visit China in a decade.
It is unclear whether Cheng will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping during her six-day trip. While there, analysts expect her to try to eke out party-to-party cooperation agreements with the Chinese Communist Party, as she does not have authority to strike deals that will affect all of Taiwan. Beijing considers Taiwan to be part of China and refuses to engage with its president, Lai Ching-te, though Xi remains open to talks with the China-friendly KMT.
Cheng’s visit comes just weeks before Trump is expected to visit China. Beijing has repeatedly criticized U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, particularly the White House’s decision in December to authorize its largest-ever weapons package for Taipei—worth a whopping $11.1 billion. In a phone call in February, Xi warned Trump that “Taiwan will never be allowed to separate from China” and that “the U.S. must handle the issue of arms sales to Taiwan with prudence.”
Odds and Ends
For years, engineering students at Canada’s University of British Columbia have suspended the hollowed-out shells of old Volkswagen Beetles in difficult-to-access locations as part of a long-running prank. But this time, that tradition may have gone too far. On Monday, authorities urged residents to stay away from a rock face where a red Beetle shell with an “E” painted on its roof loomed over the highway. The site, located near the Stawamus Chief rock formation, is considered a sacred place for Canada’s Indigenous Squamish Nation, and it is a popular spot among hikers and climbers. “This is an area that deserves respect, and that wasn’t the case here,” Squamish Mayor Armand Hurford said.
