DONALD TRUMP SAYS his “favourite thing” would be to take take Iran’s oil, as he mulls over the next steps of the war.

His comments come while he is still insisting a deal could be made with Iranians.

In an interview with the Financial Times, the US president 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 he has “a lot of options” and suggested one could be seizing Kharg Island.

Kharg Island, nicknamed “Forbidden Island”, is home to over 90% of Iran’s oil products and is located off the south-west coast of the country in the gulf.

“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” Trump said. “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.”

Trump told reporters abaord Air Force One yesterday that the US and Israel 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 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.”

With reporting by AFP

Need more clarity and context on what is happening in the Middle East? Check out our FactCheck Knowledge Bank for essential reads and guides to finding good information online.