War analysts have been weighing up the risk of a US military invasion of Kharg Island.
The tiny Iranian island is responsible for 90 per cent of the nation’s crude oil exports, and is Iran’s “economic lifeline”, according to Gulf International Forum executive director Dania Thafer.
US President Donald Trump’s team members have refused to rule out the US seizing Kharg Island, which would be an attempt to collapse the regime’s economy and loosen its grip on the global market, US officials have said.
The US has so far dodged energy infrastructure while bombing more than 90 targets on Kharg Island, including air defences, a naval base and mine storage facilities.
Iran said that any damage to energy infrastructure would be met with retaliatory strikes on American-linked facilities in the region.
US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday that Trump is “leaving all options on the table … What could happen with Kharg Island? We’ll see.”
Back in 1988, during a marine traffic disruption in the Persian Gulf at the end of the Iran-Iraq war, Trump said in an interview with The Guardian newspaper that taking Kharg Island would be a way to pressure Iran if it fired at American troops or ships.
“I’d do a number on Kharg Island; I’d go in and take it,” he said at the time.
Trump’s current stance on the matter remains unknown, though he has recently deployed more than 1000 paratroopers and 5000 Marines, putting Iran on alert for a potential ground invasion.
Some analysts, such as Villanova University military geography expert and former Army lieutenant colonel Francis A. Galgano, believe the move “should be one of the central missions of the conflict” if the US aim is to win the war against Iran.
“It provides the US with enormous leverage in any negotiations.”
But other analysts, such as University College London US-Iran relations expert Christian Emery said that such an attack would be a major gamble.
“Trump would be gambling that the remaining Iranian leadership, faced with the loss of tens of billions in annual revenue, would capitulate,” Emery said.
He said that “military success is by no means guaranteed” and noted the “real risk of it spiraling into a far more dangerous” situation.
“(It) would be an absolutely disastrous decision that would ensure the conflict lasted many months.”
An oil facility on Kharg Island in 2017. File image Credit: Getty Images via NBC
—NBC