Iranian officials on Tuesday called on young people to form human chains around the country’s power plants, and state media showed crowds gathering outside electricity stations in Tehran, Tabriz and Dezful with Iranian flags and banners.
The mobilization came as airstrikes on Iran had already hit railways, the Kharg Island oil export terminal, bridges and a petrochemicals complex, raising the stakes around the country’s energy infrastructure. People gathered at the largest power plant near Tehran, at a plant in Tabriz in the north-west and on a bridge in Dezful in the south-west that was said to be 1,700 years old.
President Masoud Pezeshkian said 14 million people had signed up in a voluntary drive to fight for their country, saying the volunteers had declared their readiness to sacrifice their lives in defence of Iran. In a video message on a newscast, Alireza Rahimi urged young people, athletes, artists, students, university students and professors to gather on Tuesday at 2pm around the power plants that he described as national assets belonging to the future of Iran and to Iranian youth.
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Iran has used human-chain demonstrations around its nuclear sites in the past when tensions with the West were high, but this time the call focused on power plants as the conflict broadened. The warning from the country’s Revolutionary Guards was blunter still: restraint was over. They said they would target infrastructure linked to the United States and its partners in a way that would deprive them of oil and gas in the region for years.
For people in Tehran, the moves landed as a warning rather than reassurance. One man said his household had already collected basic necessities and equipment to charge mobile phones in case it had to flee the capital, adding that no good could come from the fighting because, in his view, the United States and Israel did not care about Iranian people and were simply following their own agenda. With indirect talks still continuing through Pakistan, the rush to shield power plants suggests officials are preparing for a wider strike cycle, not a pause in it.
