A president who once warned against touching Iran’s oil now wants all of it.
President Donald Trump declared Thursday that the United States could soon seize Iran’s strategic Kharg Island oil hub, the latest escalation in a conflict that has slid, week by week, into open warfare between Washington and Tehran.
“The United States will be hitting Iran … VERY HARD TONIGHT,” Trump wrote on TRUTH Social Thursday morning. Then the larger ambition: “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.”
BREAKING: President Trump says the U.S. will hit Iran ‘VERY HARD TONIGHT,’ claiming the regime’s Navy, Air Force, radar, air defenses and much of its offensive capability are completely “GONE.”
Trump also floated taking Kharg Island and other oil infrastructure points, saying… pic.twitter.com/pwZhmrUgbC
— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 11, 2026
Consider what that sentence asks. Total control. Not a strike, not a blockade, but ownership of another nation’s energy future. Kharg Island handles roughly 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports, which is another way of saying it is most of what Iran has left to sell.
To take it is to take the country’s leverage, its revenue, its bargaining position, all at once.
Trump reached for a precedent, comparing the possible takeover to his administration’s moves on Venezuela’s energy markets, an arrangement he said was “working out brilliantly.” Whether the comparison reassures or unsettles depends on what one thinks of that record.
The remarks followed a second straight day of American strikes on Iranian targets, set off by the downing of a US Apache helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week.
US officials say an Iranian drone brought the aircraft down, and Trump ordered the retaliatory strikes himself. Iran answered with missiles aimed at American installations in Bahrain, Jordan, and Kuwait, and so the fear that has hovered over the region for weeks, the fear of a wider war, drew closer.
In the early days of Operation Epic Fury, Trump deliberately spared Iran’s oil infrastructure, calling those facilities essential to whatever economy Iran might rebuild once the fighting stopped.
He was thinking, then, about the morning after.
Thursday, he was thinking about tonight — and finally bringing an end to the world’s deadliest regime.
BREAKING: President Trump confirms that “bigger, more powerful” bombings against Iran will take place tonight.
The president also telling @foxandfriends the U.S. could go into Iran with a small group of soldiers and “take over the whole place,” but also says he doesn’t want to… pic.twitter.com/t4kIX5AOe5
— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 11, 2026
