President Trump says US Navy will begin blockade of Strait of Hormuz

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps called President Donald Trump's threats to destroy all of Iran’s bridges and power plants if a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz isn't reached "baseless" and vowed to continue their operations.

"The rude rhetoric, arrogance and baseless threats of the delusional U.S. president, arising from the deadlock he faces and aimed at justifying the repeated defeats of the U.S. military, will have no effect on the continuation of offensive and crushing operations by the fighters of Islam against U.S. and Israeli enemies, and will not repair the humiliation of the United States in West Asia," IRGC spokesperson Ebrahim Zolfaqari said in a statement published in Iranian state media.

President Donald Trump is threatening to destroy all of Iran’s bridges and power plants in a four-hour blitz attack on Tuesday night if the countries don’t agree to a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by 8 p.m. ET.

"We have a plan because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12:00 tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again," Trump said. "I mean, complete demolition by 12:00, and it will happen over a period of four hours if we want it to. We don't want that to happen."

The president stressed that any deal must include reopening the Strait of Hormuz, saying, “We have to have a deal that's acceptable to me, and part of that deal is going to be we want free traffic of oil and everything else.”

He wouldn’t discuss specifics of ceasefire negotiations but said, “we have a active, willing participant on the other side.”

Trump has sent mixed messages for weeks, saying the war with Iran is winding down while also threatening more attacks. Asked which one it is, Trump replied, “I can’t tell you. I don't know."

“Depends what they do,” Trump said, before repeating his threat to send Iran back to the “stone ages.”

-ABC News’ Mary Bruce

ABC News' Mary Bruce asked President Donald Trump at a White House briefing about whether some in Iran might welcome U.S. attacks on the country's infrastructure.

“Why would they want you to blow up their infrastructure?" she asked.

Trump responded that the Iranians “would be willing to suffer that in order to have freedom.”

He said the Iranian people have asked the U.S. to “please keep bombing.”

“These are people that are living where the bombs are exploding,” Trump said. "And when we leave and we're not hitting those areas, they're saying, ‘Please come back, come back, come back.’”

“All I can tell you is they want freedom,” he said. “They have lived in a world that you know nothing about. It's a violent, horrible world where if you protest, you are shot.”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the U.S. deployed both human assets and "exquisite technologies that no other intelligence service in the world possesses" to locate the weapons system officer during a rescue operation in Iran this weekend.

Ratcliffe said some of the unique capabilities the CIA used are ones that only the president can deploy. He would not publicly divulge what they were.

"At the president's direction, we deployed both human assets and exquisite technologies that no other intelligence service in the world possesses to a daunting challenge comparable to hunting for a single ... grain of sand in the middle of a desert," Ratcliffe said.

"This was also a race against the clock, as it was critical that we locate the downed aviator as quickly as possible, while at the same time keeping our enemies misdirected," he said.

Ratcliffe also said U.S. “intelligence reflects that the Iranians were embarrassed and ultimately humiliated by the success of this audacious rescue mission.”

A U.S. fighter jet with two airmen on board was shot down over Iran on Friday, and the jet’s pilot was rescued the same day. The U.S. launched a search for the second missing airman, who was trapped in the "treacherous mountains of Iran" with the Iranian military closing in, President Donald Trump said. That airman was rescued on Sunday.

-ABC News’ Mariam Khan