President Donald Trump said Sunday he would like to “take the oil in Iran” and is weighing seizing Kharg Island, the export hub responsible for more than 90% of Iran’s oil shipments. In an interview with the Financial Times, Trump said his “preference would be to take the oil.”
“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,” he said.
The comments are among Trump’s most direct remarks about what he would do regarding Iranian oil. In a separate interview with NBC News this month, he sidestepped whether he planned to try to take Iran’s oil, saying, “You look at Venezuela. People have thought about it, but it’s too soon to talk about that.” In January, the U.S. captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and proceeded to take more control over the country’s oil industry.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday night.
On Kharg Island, a rare island made of hard coral off Iran’s coast, Trump said: “Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options. It would also mean we had to be there [in Kharg Island] for a while.”
Global oil prices have surged amid the war, with U.S. crude trading above $100 a barrel Sunday. Thousands more U.S. troops are heading to the Middle East, including the arrival of the USS Tripoli as part of a 3,500-troop complement. Yet Trump and his team also indicate they are working on a 15-point proposal to end the war.
Trump declined to say whether a ceasefire deal could come in the coming days to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital chokepoint that handles roughly 20% of the world’s oil exports.
“We’ve got about 3,000 targets left — we’ve bombed 13,000 targets — and another couple of thousand targets to go,” Trump told the Financial Times. “A deal could be made fairly quickly.”