American warplanes struck more than 50 military positions on Iran’s Kharg Island in the early hours of Tuesday, with a US official telling Reuters the assault targeted sites that had already been hit during a larger raid in March. Oil infrastructure on the island was again left untouched.
The first assault, on 13 March, saw US Central Command hit more than 90 Iranian military sites across the island, destroying naval mine storage facilities, missile storage bunkers, air defences, a naval base, an airport control tower and a helicopter hangar.
Trump described it at the time as one of the most powerful bombing raids in the history of the Middle East.
Kharg Island is a five kilometre stretch of land roughly 32 kilometres off Iran’s southern coast in the Persian Gulf.
US officials have described it as the nexus for all Iranian oil supply, with up to 90% of Iran’s crude exports processed and shipped from its terminals through underwater pipelines connected to the country’s largest oil and gas fields.
The island hosts three main energy sites, including the Falat Iran Oil Company, which produces around 500,000 barrels of crude per day, and the Kharg Petrochemical Company.
Satellite imagery taken days after the March bombing showed the export terminal still functioning, with three tankers moored at the facility.
The decision to spare oil infrastructure both times has kept global energy markets from an even sharper spike, but it has also drawn criticism from hawks who argue the restraint undermines leverage over Tehran.
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said last month that Israel should destroy all of Iran’s oil facilities on the island, arguing it would cripple the economy and topple the regime.
Vice President JD Vance, speaking in Budapest on Tuesday, confirmed the latest operation but framed it as routine. “We were going to strike some military targets on Kharg Island, and I believe we have done so,” he said.
“We’re not going to strike energy and infrastructure targets until the Iranians either make a proposal that we can get behind, or don’t make a proposal.”
Iran has not been idle between the two rounds of bombing. Multiple people familiar with US intelligence reporting said Tehran moved additional military personnel and layered air defences to the island in recent weeks, including shoulder fired surface to air missile systems known as MANPADs, in anticipation of a possible US ground operation.
That possibility has fuelled intense speculation. The US news outlet Axios reported on 20 March that Trump was considering a blockade or occupation of Kharg Island to force Iran to allow shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
Reports of 5,000 US Marines and sailors being deployed to the Persian Gulf have added weight to that scenario.
A White House official told the BBC the US military could take the island “at any time” but said there were no current plans to send troops.
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warned in March that Iran’s enemies, backed by a regional country he did not name, were preparing to occupy one of its islands.
The last time Kharg Island faced sustained heavy bombardment before this conflict was during the Iran Iraq War in the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein’s forces targeted the terminal to cripple Iranian oil revenue.
Four decades later, the island is once again at the centre of a fight over who controls the flow of energy through the Persian Gulf.
