Trump Targets Kharg Island's Oil Terminals, Sending Brent Crude Soaring
LONDON, The implicit understanding that oil terminals would be off-limits in any military escalation in the Persian Gulf has ended. On August 31, US President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that he would strike Kharg Island's export terminals 'to smithereens' if Iran did not stand down from its campaign to close the Strait of Hormuz.
The post came after US forces struck rocket-launcher positions on Larak Island in a move framed as defensive interdiction of sea-mine deployment systems, and as Iranian drones and ballistic missiles were still being intercepted over US bases in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.
Brent crude settled at $92.63 a barrel on Tuesday, September 2, having climbed from $88.45 at Monday's open. The Brent-WTI spread widened to $4.43, reflecting the Atlantic Basin's particular anxiety: roughly 17 percent of global seaborne crude moves through Hormuz.
The market's response was not panic, but recalibration. When US forces struck Kharg Island's military infrastructure in March, the operation was deliberately bounded, with more than ninety IRGC positions hit, but the oil terminal complex left untouched.