The case for seizing Kharg Island rests on a single number: the tiny eight-square-mile terminal off Iran's coast handles roughly 90 percent of the Islamic Republic's crude oil exports. The complication is that capturing Iran's economic lifeline, military experts say, could happen in hours. Holding it is a different problem.
President Donald Trump declined to rule out a U.S. operation to seize the island during a Fox News interview with chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst, saying it would be "foolish" to telegraph his intentions either way. He noted that previous U.S. strikes had intentionally avoided the island's oil facilities because they are, in his words, "a chunk of the world economy."
What a seizure would look like
Vice Adm. (Ret.) Robert Harward, former deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, described an operation built around a Marine Expeditionary Unit conducting an amphibious assault while U.S. naval and air forces establish control over the surrounding battlespace. The goal, Harward told Fox News Digital, would be to preserve Kharg's oil infrastructure for what he called "a government of Iran that is focused on supporting its people." Iranian defenders would be given an opportunity to surrender before major fighting begins.
The read-through for the oil market is the infrastructure question. Trump's own framing matched Harward's: he said he had instructed U.S. forces during earlier strikes to "hit everything, but the oil." Kharg's terminal entered service in 1960 after construction began in the late 1950s, and damaging it, both Trump and Harward suggested, carries consequences that extend well beyond Iran.
The counterargument
The counterargument belongs to Nicholas Carl, assistant director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. Iran, Carl told Fox News Digital, has spent decades building denial capabilities designed specifically to keep U.S. forces away from its shores. Those capabilities include anti-ship cruise missiles, naval mines, and hundreds of fast attack craft. Kharg sits 16 miles off Iran's Gulf coast, well within range of shore-based missiles and drones from the nearby mainland.
Harward acknowledged the shift in risk once an assault succeeds. The primary danger moves from conventional naval combat to missile and drone attacks launched from Iranian territory. "If they start striking Kharg itself, they become accountable for damaging their own economic lifeline," he said. That logic gives Tehran a reason to hold fire. It offers little comfort to forces on the ground.
Retired Vice Adm. Mark Fox, former commander of the 5th Fleet, has raised a different question about target selection altogether. Fox previously argued that smaller islands near the Strait of Hormuz, including Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb, and Abu Musa, could present more manageable military objectives while creating a significant strategic dilemma for Tehran, given their position along one of the world's most important shipping lanes.
On balance, the line to watch is not whether U.S. forces can take Kharg. Military planners appear confident on that point. The risk is what comes after: defending an eight-square-mile island a short distance from one of the most heavily armed coastlines in the Middle East, with a U.S.-led blockade already constraining Iran's oil exports.