This handout image taken by the European Space Agency (ESA) captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite shows a view of Iran's Kharg Island, which hosts the country's main crude export terminal and is responsible for the overwhelming majority of its oil shipments to the world, about 30 kilometers south of the mainland in the north of the Gulf, on March 2, 2026.
BEIRUT — U.S. President Donald Trump is considering taking control of Iran’s main oil terminal on Kharg Island, an operation that would require “the deployment of U.S. forces on the ground if tankers remain bottled up in the Persian Gulf,” Axios reported, citing U.S. officials.
The United States continues strikes against Iranian targets across the country, focusing particularly on the Persian Gulf coastline and Kharg Island, a strategic terminal about 25 kilometers off Iran’s coast that handles roughly 90 percent of the country’s crude oil exports.
On Friday, Trump announced he had ordered strikes on military installations on the island while sparing its oil facilities. On Saturday, he told NBC that the U.S. “may hit it a few more times just for fun.”
“No one should read into anything more than what the president announced,” a senior White House official said. “The president has made no decisions on Kharg Island,” adding that “that could change” if efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz drag on. “The president is not going to wait around and let the Iranians dictate the pace of the conflict.”
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