Kharg: US has set its sights on Iran's Achilles heel 

TT

Published 06.00

            

            

           The Iranian island of Kharg, photographed from a satellite on February 26 this year.

           1 / 2Photo: Satellite image from Planet Labs Pbc/Handout Via AP/TT

The US has set its sights on the Iranian island of Kharg – and is considering a more difficult attack with soldiers on the ground.

The small island is seen as one of the most valuable pieces in the war game of sea lanes and oil.

What is Kharg?

A small island, a few miles off the coast of Iran in the northern Persian Gulf. It is only 25 square kilometers in size – slightly smaller than Visingsö in the Swedish Vättern – and fewer than 10,000 people live there.

The island has a unique location in the area and became absolutely central when Iran's oil industry grew. The sea along Iran’s coast is too shallow for the largest tankers to dock there, but the waters around Kharg are deep enough.

Up to ten giant ships at a time can be filled with Iranian oil there. The flow can amount to up to seven million barrels per day.

Kharg is reportedly nicknamed “the forbidden island” in popular parlance, as it is under strict military control.

Why has the US targeted it there?

Almost 90 percent of Iran’s oil is transported by sea pipelines to Kharg, where it is picked up by giant ships or stored in depots. It is a crucial hub for Iran’s most important source of revenue – but also a bottleneck that is perhaps the country’s biggest Achilles’ heel.

The US and Israel’s war against Iran has largely come down to economic exhaustion or blackmail. Iran has stopped shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, thereby closing the Persian Gulf, with skyrocketing global energy prices as a result.

By taking control of Kharg and most of Iran's oil exports, the US would put more economic pressure on the Iranian regime.

When the US government also says it wants to end the war within a few weeks, an invasion of Kharg could be a relatively limited undertaking.

What happens in the event of an attack?

The US president threatens to "wipe out" Kharg, among other places, if Iran does not meet his demands. Military targets on the island were bombed in March and, according to Donald Trump, it can now be taken "very easily" - but holding it is not straightforward.

Thousands of US paratroopers are in place in the vicinity, but the issue of larger commitments on the ground in the Middle East is sensitive in the US after previous wars. Landed soldiers who try to occupy Kharg quickly become targets for attacks from the adjacent coast.

If the flow of oil is stopped, it will strangle Iran's income, but also access to the global oil market, where the price has already skyrocketed.

Iran is threatening to strike back harder than before against its energy-rich neighbors on the other side of the Persian Gulf. Iran's allies in Yemen, the Houthi movement, are also threatening to strangle shipping in the Red Sea and with it about a quarter of global seaborne trade.

FACTS

Kharg

Kharg is a small Iranian island in the northern Persian Gulf, a few miles from Iran's northern coast and the larger port city of Bushehr. Almost all of Iran's oil exports to the outside world pass through there.

Today, the island is dominated by the oil industry, with depots and terminals and tankers in shuttle service. It is also home to up to 10,000 people.

The island consists mainly of limestone, is one of the few islands in the Persian Gulf with freshwater springs and is also home to many gazelles that roam freely.

The earliest traces of human habitation on Kharg have been dated to a few hundred years before our era. There are ruins of one of the region's first Christian monasteries, as well as a fort built by the Portuguese during the colonial period. The Dutch East India Company had an outpost there in the 18th century.

Under the first Shah of modern Iran, in the early 20th century, political prisoners were held on the island.