Trump Threatens to Seize Iran's Kharg Island Oil Hub
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- Trump posted on Truth Social Thursday that "at some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points"
- Kharg Island sits about 15 miles off Iran's coast in the Persian Gulf and handles roughly 90% of its crude exports, with a deep-water terminal that can reportedly load around 7 million barrels per day
- The U.S. military has already struck the strategic hub, but Trump said in March he spared Kharg's oil infrastructure "for reasons of decency"
- The Trump administration has considered plans to occupy or blockade the island to pressure Iran into reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran claims is closed after this week's fresh strikes (a claim U.S. Central Command disputes)
- A strike on Kharg would hit China — the primary buyer of Iranian oil — and ripple through global energy markets, while also risking retaliatory Iranian strikes on oil facilities across Gulf states
- A U.S. official told Axios in March: "There are big risks. There are big rewards" — putting American ground forces on the island would leave them vulnerable to Iranian missiles and drones given its proximity to the mainland
- Trump's fixation on Kharg is decades old: he told The Guardian in 1988, "One bullet shot at one of our men or ships and I'd do a number on Kharg Island. I'd go in and take it."
Why it matters: Kharg is Iran's economic lifeline — choking it could collapse Tehran's revenue and force it to accept Trump's terms — but the island sits just 15 miles off the coast, making any ground operation a sitting target for Iranian retaliation that would simultaneously spike global oil prices and hit China, the largest buyer of Iranian crude, the hardest.
