Donald Trump has a history of outlandish statements but his most recent one has left the world on edge after he threatened to send Iran back to the 'Stone Ages'.
The US president has become increasingly frustrated with the Middle Eastern country in recent weeks after their war began at the end of February.
Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is perhaps the largest source of that frustration right now, with the 79-year-old perhaps shocked that Iran hasn't simply just accepted defeat since strikes were first launched and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed.
Trump confirmed recently that Iran had until 8pm tonight (Eastern Daylight Time) to remove their military forces from the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway in which a large proportion of the world's oil passes through.
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And after seeing little success, the president issued a terrifying warning earlier today on Truth Social, suggesting that the whole civilisation could die should they fail to follow his commands.
He wrote: "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will."
The president later told Fox News: "If we get to that point there is going to be an attack like they have not seen."
Naturally, people have been speculating exactly what Trump might mean with his comments, and whether it might involve nuclear weapons, which would undoubtedly have some catastrophic consequences.
Vice President JD Vance certainly didn't downplay these worries when he suggested that the US has 'tools in our toolkit that we so far haven't decided to use'.
He added: "The President of the United States can decide to use them and he will decide to use them if the Iranians don't change their course of conduct."
A White House X account later said 'literally nothing' in Vance's statement implied Trump was considering nuclear weapons.
Experts seem confident that Trump won't yet turn towards the nuclear weapons in his arsenal, suggesting that there isn't yet a reason to repeat the horrific actions we saw at the end of World War Two when the US dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Iran and nuclear proliferation expert Joseph Rodgers said: "Any actual battlefield use of nuclear weapons [is] highly unlikely. There's not really any reason to use nuclear weapons in the conflict right now.
"There's no reason to use nuclear weapons to accomplish the goal of taking out bridges or power plants. The very, very isolated utility that nuclear weapons could provide is in a target that's really deeply buried."
Instead, it seems likely that Trump will instead launch another round of strikes that will target power plants and bridges, in the event that Iran don't pull out of the Strait of Hormuz in the next few hours.
The president previously said: "We're giving them tomorrow, eight o'clock ET, and after that, they're going to have no bridges, they're going to have no power plants — the Stone Ages."
This could have devastating consequences for ordinary Iranians. For instance, The Telegraph reports that if the US targets the Sefid Bridge, which crosses the Karun River in northern Iran, it will cut off the main access route to hospitals, schools and markets for people in the coastal Gilan provinces.
The nearest alternate crossing is only accessible by mountain roads and will be cut off in winter. People seeking hospital treatment could face hours of extra delays.
If Trump targets the 1.5km Urmia Lake Bridge in northwestern Iran, a throughway that carries 15,000 vehicles daily will be gone. Food and medical supplies for more than eight million people could no longer travel that route.
If this sounds bad, Trump could also target Iran's only nuclear power plant at Bushehr.
If it's hit by missile strikes, the Telegraph says it 'could trigger nuclear contamination on the scale of Fukushima', and radioactive material could travel to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia
There's also the risk of retaliation from Iran affecting the wider Middle East.
If Iran's power grid is targeted, 'the entire region and Saudi Arabia will fall into complete darkness with Iran's retaliatory strikes,' according to a senior Iranian source.
Topics: Donald Trump, Iran
James Moorhouse