US could take Kharg Island ‘very easily’
US President Donald Trump has raised the idea of American forces seizing Iran’s Kharg Island, its main oil terminal in the Persian Gulf.
“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” Trump told the Financial Times in an interview on Monday. “It would also mean we had to be there (on Kharg Island) for a while.”
When asked about the state of Iranian defense on the island, Trump said “I don’t think they have any defense. We could take it very easily.”
Iran has threatened to mine the Persian Gulf if its territory is invaded. The United States and Israel kept up their attacks on Monday on the Islamic Republic, even as there were signs of progress in nascent ceasefire talks.
20 ships cleared to cross strait
Trump also said that Iran had agreed to allow 20 ships carrying oil through the Strait of Hormuz starting on Monday morning and continuing over the next few days “out of a sign of respect.”
“I would only say that we’re doing extremely well in that negotiation but you never know with Iran because we negotiate with them and then we always have to blow them up,” he said.
‘Regime change’
The war has already threatened global supplies of oil and natural gas, sparked fertilizer shortages and disrupted air travel. Iran’s grip on the strategic Strait of Hormuz has shaken markets and prices.
Also on Sunday, Trump said that the US-Israel war had achieved regime change in Iran, even as he assured that he would “make a deal” with the Iranians.
“I think we’ll make a deal with them, pretty sure … but we’ve had regime change,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, citing the number of Iranian leaders killed in the month-long war.
“We’re dealing with different people than anybody’s dealt with before. It’s a whole different group of people. So I would consider that regime change,” Trump said.
Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of former supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an airstrike at the start of the war on February 28, was tapped to be the country’s third supreme leader since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Ever since the conflict kicked off with US-Israeli strikes on Iran, Tehran has effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas transits.
Concessions from Iran
The closure has sent global oil prices soaring, but Trump said that relief was on the way in the form of concessions from Iran, starting with the imminent passage of several tankers through the key waterway.
“They gave us, I think, out of a sign of respect, 20 boats of oil, big, big boats of oil going through the Hormuz Strait,” Trump said, adding that the shipments would be “taking place starting tomorrow morning, over the next couple of days.”
