Intro: Tehran threatens to reduce US-linked oil facilities in the region to a ‘pile of ashes’ if oil structures on the island are attacked.
Washington: 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.
US Central Command spoke later in the day of what it described as a large-scale precision strike. “U.S. Forces successfully struck more than 90 Iranian military targets,” CENTCOM said.
State media outlet IRNA, citing a senior provincial official, said exports from the island were continuing normally despite the US attack.
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.