Iran war: Kharg Island could be key to entire war for US and Israel military

Nine days into his war against Iran and Donald Trump’s plan is unclear. Some experts have a intriguing suggestion: capture an island that handles 90 per cent of Iranian oil, cutting off the regime’s primary funding source.

Tiny Kharg Island could be the key to the whole war. About 10km long and 25km from the mainland, the island’s terminals load tankers with roughly 1.5 million barrels of oil a day — most destined for China.

The idea of taking the island by force was proposed on the weekend by Michael Rubin, a Republican policy analyst who was an adviser on Iran and Iraq to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the early 2000s.

Dr Rubin told a US media outlet he had shared his suggestion with the Trump administration as a way to get around the biggest problem facing the US president: air wars have never been able to remove governments on their own.

“If they can’t sell their own oil, they can’t make payroll,” Dr Rubin told Politico.

Iran still shipping oil

Taking control of Iran’s oil exports would give the Americans the added benefit of leverage over China. Iranian oil is under global sanctions, but experts believe China buys most of the oil dispatched from the island.

Despite spreading to 14 nearby countries and suspending 20 per cent of global oil and gas shipments, the war doesn’t seem to have shut down Iranian oil shipments. On Sunday, 20 tankers were docked at Kharg Island or waiting nearby, according TankerTrackers.com, an energy-information company. Two super tankers were loading crude oil.

With no clear signal from the White House as how the war will end or what will be considered victory, Dr Rubin’s idea was seized upon over the weekend as a clever way to avoid the horror of a land invasion and defeat the ayatollahs.

Guy Laron, an international relations lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, speculated Mr Trump capturing the island could “Venezuelize” Iran, a reference to the capture of President Nicolas Maduro and the subsequent cooperation with US foreign policy by the government of the South American oil producer.

Before the war began, Iran ramped up Kharg exports from 1.5 million barrels of oil a day to 4 million, according to Dr Laron.

“That means that the Iranians read Trump differently than the Western media does,” he wrote on X. “They don’t think he’s after regime change or democracy. They think he’s after oil.

“If the US seizes Kharg, it doesn’t need regime change. It directly controls Iran’s most important source of income.”

‘Do you capture it intact or destroy it?’

Capturing the island would not be difficult for the world’s superpower, according to former Australian general and military strategist Mick Ryan. With Iran’s navy wiped out and few air defences left, the US has almost unfettered access to the Persian Gulf.

The challenge for Mr Trump would be, according to Mr Ryan, managing the diplomatic backlash from seizing another country’s energy infrastructure and disrupting global energy markets further.

“Do you want to capture it intact or destroy it?” Mr Ryan told The Nightly. “Both will have different impacts on the global economy. It is a tough political and economic issue.”

Monday’s response to the surge in oil prices demonstrated the economic danger of threatening 4 per cent of the global supply of oil.

As oil futures prices passed $US100 a barrel, shares collapsed. The S&P/ASX 200 fell as much as 4 per cent, a huge drop that indicates investors fear accelerating inflation, higher interest rates, rising unemployment and an economic slowdown.

Petrol prices a headache for Trump

In the US, petrol prices are already causing political headaches for Mr Trump. He has promised they will be “a little high” for a while and then “as soon as this ends, those prices are going to drop, I believe, lower than ever before”.

The US appears to have avoided attacks on oil infrastructure. But over the weekend the Iranian government accused Israel of bombing oil storage depots around the capital Tehran, which became engulfed in inky black smoke that stained clothes and made breathing difficult.

“There’s this smell in the air I can’t explain,” a resident told The Guardian. “There’s soot everywhere and we don’t even want to touch it with gloves.”

Dr Rubin told Politico the island-invasion idea has been circulated within the National Security Council, which advises the president on foreign and military policy. But it is not clear if he is aware of the island’s strategic importance, he said, suggesting part of the plan is to attract Mr Trump’s interest through media coverage.