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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\nTOI correspondent from Washington:<\/span> US President Donald Trump on Monday threatened to annihilate Iran as a nation, threatening its drinking water infrastructure, energy grid, and its oil wells unless it capitulated in ongoing talks \u2013 which Teheran denies are taking place.In a series of confounding posts and statements that appeared to be aimed at turning the heat on a defiant Iran, Trump, taunted by critics who say he has led the US into another needless war, said Washington is in \u201cserious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran,\u201d without identifying the interlocutors. \u201cGreat progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately \u201cOpen for Business,\u201d we will conclude our lovely \u201cstay\u201d in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet \u201ctouched,\u201d Trump warned in a social media post. In separate remarks to reporters on Air Force One, Trump said he would decimate Iran if it did not hand over \u201cnuclear dust\u201d ( uranium) while claiming Teheran has almost surrendered and offered the US 20 boats laden with oil as a \u201ctribute.\u201d \u201cIf they don\u2019t do that (give its nuclear quest) they are not going to have a country,\u201d Trump said in an explicit threat of annihilation even amid claims of diplomatic outreach.Given the lack of a clear chain of command in Teheran, mainly on account of its leadership being targeted for assassination, it was not clear who the US is talking to in or from Iran. Teheran has repeatedly denied it is participating in any talks, including the one Pakistan is purported to host. Trump\u2019s threat to decimate Iran\u2019s infrastructure came even as Iran defiantly continued to strike US assets in the region despite its military being attrited by American and Israeli strikes. In a dangerous escalation that brought the region\u2019s drinking water infrastructure under fire on top of oil assets under attack, Kuwait accused Iran of bombing its desalination plants, a charge Teheran denied and claimed it was Israel which had attacked the water plants to blame Iran for it. Many of the region\u2019s countries depend on desalination plants for their drinking water needs (90 per cent in the case of Kuwait) and any targeting of such plants, whether by the US or Israel or Iran, is liable to be treated as a war crime. Many such plants are run by workers from India, one of whom is believed to have died in the attack on a Kuwaiti plant over the weekend. Trump\u2019s public threat to hit desalination plants constitutes an unprecedented escalation, coming on top of US attacks on educational institutions \u2013 authenticated by the western media \u2013 that have killed scores of students. Trump’s war on Iran, viewed as reckless by scores of American critics, is hugely unpopular in the US, including among his MAGA base. Following yet another purported strike on an Iranian university, Tehran warned on Monday that if Washington did not condemn such attacks, it reserved the right to strike back at US institutions in the Middle East, causing Qatar, an academic hub in the region, to evacuate all student housing in Doha\u2019s “Education City.” US universities such as Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, and Texas A&M have campuses in Doha.Though enfeebled by the US and Israeli attacks, Iran also warned that it would hit back at residences of US and Israeli officials and politicians in the region after being subjected to targeted assassination of its leadership.While Trump has repeatedly claimed that Iran has already been decimated and is close to surrendering, Tehran has landed an occasional blow to US assets in the region, including the reported hit on Saturday at the Prince Sultan Air base in Saudi Arabia that destroyed an E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft, one of just 16 in the US fleet and a key flying command center for tracking threats over 250 miles.<\/div>\n