U.S. President Donald Trump took Venezuela’s oil. He told Financial Times in an interview published overnight that he wants Iran’s oil, too. “To be honest with you, my favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran but some stupid people back in the U.S. say: ‘why are you doing that?’ But they’re stupid people.” FT notes that such a move would involve seizing Kharg Island, through which most of Iran’s oil is exported.
FT also notes that an assault on the export hub would be risky, raising the chances of more U.S. casualties and extending the cost and duration of the war. “Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” Trump said. “It would also mean we had to be there [in Kharg Island] for a while.” Asked about the state of Iranian defense on Kharg Island he said: “I don’t think they have any defence. We could take it very easily.”
But Trump also claimed that indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran via Pakistani “emissaries” were progressing well. Trump has set a deadline of April 6 for Iran to accept a deal ending the war or face U.S. strikes on its energy sector.
Trump declined to offer specific details as to whether a ceasefire could be agreed on in the coming days. “We’ve got about 3,000 targets left—we’ve bombed 13,000 targets—and another couple of thousand targets to go,” he said. “A deal could be made fairly quickly.”
Last week, he said that Iran had permitted 10 Pakistan-flagged oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz as a “present” to the White House. The number of tankers had now been doubled to 20, he told the FT, which FT said was not possible to immediately verify. “They gave us 10,” he said. “Now they’re giving 20, and the 20 have already started and they’re going right up the middle of the Strait.”
Trump added that Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary Speaker and one of the country’s top wartime leaders, had authorized the additional tankers. “He’s the one who authorized the ships to me,” Trump claimed. “Remember I said they’re giving me a present? And everyone said: ‘What’s the present? Bullshit.’ When they heard about that they kept their mouth shut and the negotiations are going very well.”
Trump also claimed that Iran had already had “regime change” after Iran’s longtime supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many other senior officials were killed at the start of the war and in strikes that followed. “The people we’re dealing with are a totally different group of people…. [They] are very professional,” Trump said.
