President Donald Trump on Sunday posted a ten-second A.I.-generated video of Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminal being “blown to smithereens,” as he put it, shortly after the first U.S. airstrikes against Iran in a month. None of the actual strikes was confirmed to have targeted Kharg Island.
Hamid Bovard, chief executive of the state-run National Iranian Oil Company, said on Monday that Trump’s tweet was “laughable,” and “conditions in Kharg are calm and appropriate.”
Bovard claimed the Kharg Island oil facility remains operational, workers are repairing damage from previous strikes, and the facilities are being modernized. About 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports normally pass through Kharg Island.
U.S. warplanes struck Iranian forces on Sunday as they were preparing to deploy more mines into the Strait of Hormuz, following the surprising revelation by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) on Thursday that most of the mines previously deployed by Iran had been quietly disarmed and cleared by American personnel.
The targets for Sunday’s airstrikes include two Iranian missile launchers on Larak Island, which is located off the coast of Bandar Abbas, Iran in the Strait of Hormuz. Larak Island is hundreds of miles from Kharg Island, Iran’s primary oil loading terminal in the Persian Gulf.
“Earlier today U.S. forces struck two Iranian launchers on Larak Island. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces were observed preparing to launch rockets with sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz,” CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins said on Sunday.
“Last week, CENTCOM completed clearing sea mines from the strait’s international shipping routes. U.S. forces are monitoring the area closely and remain prepared to protect the free flow of commerce through this essential waterway,” he added.
The strikes on Larak Island were the first acknowledged American attacks on Iran since July 29, when U.S. forces hit dozens of surveillance and coastal weapons sites controlled by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
President Trump called a halt to further strikes on August 1, ostensibly at the request of Middle Eastern allies like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), because they wanted to give diplomacy with Iran another chance.
The IRGC retaliated for the Larak Island strikes by launching drones and ballistic missiles at U.S. positions in Jordan and the UAE, but most or all of Iran’s weapons were intercepted, with no damage reported as of Monday morning.
Iran claimed its attacks on Jordan and the UAE were a “necessary and lawful” answer to the U.S. airstrikes, a talking point CENTCOM immediately rejected.
“U.S. forces took limited, precise action against IRGC minelaying forces posing an imminent threat in the Strait of Hormuz,” CENTCOM said. “In essence, Iran created the threat and the U.S. military eliminated it to protect civilian mariners, commercial shipping, and the free flow of global commerce.”
Iran also claimed an oil tanker struck one of its mines in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday and caught fire, a claim CENTCOM also rejected as false.
“No ships have hit mines in the Strait of Hormuz. This is yet another IRGC attempt to intimidate regional commercial shipping through disinformation,” CENTCOM said.
Iranian state media reported explosions near Larak Island on Sunday, and the IRGC claimed “the martyrdom and injury of several of our fighters and compatriots.” The IRGC denounced the U.S. strikes as “a fatal mistake by the Trump regime during the economic war.”
President Trump has occasionally threatened to seize or destroy Kharg Island, a move that would effectively end the Iranian oil industry. Iran has another oil terminal in the port of Jask on the Gulf of Oman, but it lacks the pipelines and loading capacity to replace Kharg Island.
“At some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets, much like we have with Venezuela, which is working out brilliantly for both Venezuela and the United States of America,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on June 11.
The U.S. naval blockade of Iran, paused in June and reimposed on July 14, reduced Iran’s oil loadings by about 70 percent over the past month. Iran has about 20 million barrels of crude oil currently in transit at sea, and can store roughly the same amount in its onshore facilities.
Meanwhile, despite Iran’s claims to have shut down the Strait of Hormuz to all other nations with terrorist threats, ship tracking services say that up to 6 million barrels of oil per day (bpd) are transiting the strait under U.S. Navy protection, and the amount is slowly increasing. About 15 million bpd flowed through the strait before the conflict with Iran began in February.
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