Iran war | US bombs Iran’s Kharg Island, warns oil facilities next
New Delhi: United States President Donald Trump has said the country’s military bombed military installations on Iran’s Kharg island, warning the area’s critical oil facilities could be next if Iran continues to block the Strait of Hormuz. Iran, in turn, threatened on Saturday to reduce US-linked oil facilities to “a pile of ashes” if oil structures on the island were attacked, as the US-Israel war on Iran, now in its punishing third week, spilled over into a global oil price crisis already in the making. Kharg island is where more than 90 percent of Iran’s oil is exported. Crude oil prices have surged more than 40 percent since the war began.
Trump said on Friday that US forces had “totally obliterated” all military targets on Iran’s Kharg island oil export hub, describing it in a social media post as “one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East”. He provided no evidence of that. The US president said he had chosen not to “wipe out” oil infrastructure on the Iranian island, for now. “However, should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision,” he added. Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported, quoting sources, that more than 15 explosions were heard on Kharg island during the US attacks.
The sources said the attacks targeted air defences, a naval base, and airport facilities, but caused no damage to oil infrastructure. Iran’s Fars news agency reported thick smoke was seen rising from the island. As per Al Jazeera’s reporting team from Tehran, said Iran’s potential retaliatory attacks on Gulf oil facilities would be a “catastrophic scenario” for the region, and for the “entire industry of oil and gas”. “The Iranians are keeping this, apparently, as a card to use,” he said. “They’ve been talking about restraint and the possibility of that restraint ending if the Iranian oil facilities are attacked, as the Americans are hinting and threatening.”
