LAST UPDATE | 33 mins ago

DONALD TRUMP HAS threatened to destroy Iran’s oil export hub of Kharg Island, oil wells and power plants if it does not agree soon to a deal to end the war.

The US president wrote on his Truth Social network that the United States is in “serious discussions” with “a more reasonable regime” in Tehran.

“Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched,’” Trump said.

Attacks on energy infrastructure have had dramatic effects on the price of oil since the US and Israel launched their illegal war against Iran almost a month ago.

In an interview with the Financial Times published yesterday, Trump said his “preference would be to take the oil”.

“To be honest with you, my favourite thing is to take the oil in Iran but some stupid people back in the U.S. say: ‘Why are you doing that?’ But they’re stupid people,” he said.

Trump said on Sunday that he has “a lot of options” and suggested one could be seizing Kharg Island.

What is Kharg Island?

The oil storage and export facilities on Kharg Island are vital to Iran’s economy, which was already in turmoil before the war began.

Iran exports around 90% of its crude oil from the island in the northern Persian Gulf, most of which goes to Asia, particularly to China.

The terminal deals with around 1.5 million barrels of crude every day, making it the source of about 1.5% of the world’s supply.

Oil is sent from Iran’s main oil fields to Kharg Island via pipelines that run underwater from the mainland.

Jetties stemming from the east side of the island allow mega tankers to dock and take on huge amounts of oil, before bringing it through the Strait of Hormuz and out into the Indian Ocean.

Critically, revenue from the oil exported from Kharg is a major source of funding for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

‘Very easily’

“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” Trump said on Sunday. “It would also mean we had to be there [in Kharg Island] for a while.”

Asked about Iranian defences there, he said: “I don’t think they have any defence. We could take it very easily.”

If such an attack were to go ahead, it would risk not only exacerbating the global energy crisis, but could also result in heavy American casualties, according to military strategy experts.

In just one day, Trump’s language about the war has sharpened, and his threats have become more direct.

He assured reporters abaord Air Force One yesterday that the US 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 said, 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.

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.”

Peacekeeper killed

Tensions have soared in the Middle East as the Iranian-backed groups including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen remain targets of Israel.

In Lebanon, a peacekeeper was killed yesterday after a projectile struck a UN position.

Indonesia confirmed that one of its peacekeepers died and three others were wounded due to “indirect artillery fire”.

UNIFIL said the incident happened overnight near the southern Lebanese village of Adchit Al Qusayr, south of the Litani river, located around 25 kilometres north of ‘Camp Shamrock’, the UNIFIL site which hosts Irish peacekeepers.

In a brief statement this morning, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said he strongly condemns the killing of the Indonesian peacekeeper “and the shocking escalation of violence that has injured a number of peacekeepers in recent days”.

The incident comes amid a sharp escalation in violence in southern Lebanon, where Israeli ground forces have crossed the border and launched an invasion into southern Lebanon, escalating their attacks against Hezbollah.

The conflict has displaced more than one million people, according to international agencies, and raised fears of a deepening humanitarian crisis.

Israel has today renewed its bombardment of Beirut’s southern suburbs while continuing air strikes on Lebanon’s south, one of which targeted an army checkpoint and killed a soldier.

The other strike targeted an apartment in a residential building, according to an AFP photographer, who said Hezbollah gunmen imposed a security cordon at the site after the attack.

A security source told AFP that three Hezbollah members were killed in the strike and three others wounded.

With reporting by AFP

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