\n<\/p>\n
Kharg Island \u2013 through which 90% of Iran\u2019s oil exports flow \u2013 is arguably the country\u2019s most sensitive economic target but the export terminal has so far remained untouched throughout the US-Israel bombing campaign.<\/p>\n
Experts say bombing or capturing the site with US forces would be likely to cause a sustained increase to already surging oil prices, as it would amount to taking the entirety of Iran\u2019s daily crude exports offline.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe may see the $120 a barrel price we saw on Monday heading to the $150 if Kharg were attacked,\u201d said Neil Quilliam, with the Chatham House thinktank. \u201cIt\u2019s too vital for global energy markets\u201d.<\/p>\n
Although the US has struck 5,000 targets in and around Iran, it has so far refrained from bombing the country\u2019s oil infrastructure \u2013 though oil prices remain nearly $20 per barrel higher because the fear of Iranian retaliation has in effect closed the strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic.<\/p>\n
Map<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s air force did strike two oil refineries and two depots on Saturday, plunging Tehran into what some residents described as an \u201capocalyptic\u201d darkness as thick black smoke descended over the capital. But there have been no attacks since.<\/p>\n
Kharg, a five-mile-long coral island in the Persian Gulf 27 miles from the mainland, is where pipelines from Iran\u2019s oilfields in the centre and the west of the country terminate. Established by a US oil conglomerate, Amoco, it was seized by Iran during the 1979 revolution.<\/p>\n
While most of Iran\u2019s coastline is silty and too shallow for very large crude tankers used by the oil industry, Kharg is sufficiently close to deep waters. Satellite imagery reveals vast loading jetties emerging from its eastern shore.<\/p>\n
Typically, between 1.3m and 1.6m barrels of oil a day pass through Kharg, though Iran increased volumes to 3m a day in mid-February, according to the investment bank JP Morgan, in anticipation of a US-led attack. A further 18m barrels are stored on Kharg as a backup, the bank added.<\/p>\n
Media reports have hinted at White House interest, including a brief reference in an Axios report on Saturday that officials had considered \u201cseizing Kharg\u201d. The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has not ruled out attacking Iran with ground forces, although there are not large numbers of US troops in the region.<\/p>\n
<\/span>A file photograph of Iranian technicians working at the Kharg oil terminal on Kharg. <\/span> Photograph: Abedin Taherkenareh\/EPA<\/p>\n Michael Rubin, a senior Pentagon adviser on Iran and Iraq in the George W Bush administration, said last week he had discussed the idea with White House officials, arguing it could be a way to cripple the Iranian regime economically. \u201cIf they can\u2019t sell their own oil, they can\u2019t make payroll,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Before the latest US-Israel offensive, most of Iran\u2019s crude oil from Kharg was exported to China. But the interconnected nature of the market means a permanent loss in export supply would affect prices globally, at a time when a further 3.5m barrels a day, mostly from Iraq, are also offline because of the closure of Hormuz.<\/p>\n Destroying Kharg or damaging the export site \u201cruns the risk of causing an economy-shaping increase in oil price that would not drop rapidly\u201d, argues Lynette Nusbacher, a former British army intelligence officer. Israel did not attack it in last summer\u2019s 12-day war, and its complex infrastructure could take years to repair.<\/p>\n There is also a longer-term political argument. \u201cKharg Island is sufficiently important to the Iranian economy that destroying its facilities would abandon any pretence of fighting a war to create a brighter future for Iran,\u201d Nusbacher argues, because it would deny a successor regime vital oil income.<\/p>\n An effort to seize the island, given its size, would be likely to require a sizeable and sustained operation, greater than a typical special forces incursion. Though a US seizure would in theory give the White House leverage over Tehran, Quilliam argued it was very likely that such an effort would be self-defeating.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the US were to seize it, then you are separating the Iranian oil industry. Iran would have production but couldn\u2019t export, while the US wouldn\u2019t be able to produce. That would set markets in a tailspin; that\u2019s a real standoff,\u201d the analyst said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kharg Island \u2013 through which 90% of Iran\u2019s oil exports flow \u2013 is arguably the country\u2019s most sensitive economic target but the export terminal has so far remained untouched throughout the US-Israel bombing campaign. Experts say bombing or capturing the site with US forces would be likely to cause a sustained increase to already surging<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[14256,3931,84,218,2961,23739,268,17062,23465,2188,261],"class_list":{"0":"post-46537","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-bombers","9":"tag-hub","10":"tag-iran","11":"tag-irans","12":"tag-island","13":"tag-kharg","14":"tag-oil","15":"tag-untouched","16":"tag-usisrael","17":"tag-vital","18":"tag-war"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}