US President Donald Trump threatened yesterday to destroy Iran’s Kharg Island, a crude oil export hub, along with oil wells and power plants unless Tehran quickly accepted a deal to end the US-Israeli war.
In a post on his Truth Social network, Trump voiced hope about US talks with a “more reasonable regime” in Tehran, an apparent reference to new leadership despite the failure of the month-long war to dislodge the Islamic republic.
But Trump warned that if a deal were not struck – including to reopen the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping lane – US forces would destroy “all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinisation plants!).”
Destroying civilian infrastructure such as power and water facilities would be illegal under international humanitarian law and could constitute a war crime, experts say.
Showing it will not back down, an Iranian parliamentary committee voted to impose tolls on vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, the passageway through which one-fifth of global oil passes.
State television said Iran would forbid the United States and Israel from passing through.
The tolling plan for the strait has outraged the United States, which has spoken of creating a “coalition” to oppose it.
“No one in the world can accept it,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Al Jazeera.
“It sets an incredible precedent. So this means that nations can now take over international waterways and claim them as their own,” Rubio said of the waterway the US president recently called the ‘Strait of Trump.’
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