The strike on Kharg Island prevents Saddam-like sabotage – opinion

It appears that Trump and his planners have internalized a lesson learned the hard way from President George H.W. Bush and his 1991 liberation of Kuwait.

By Michael Rubin, Middle East Forum

On March 13, 2026, President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that the United States had bombed Kharg Island to eliminate Iranian military and security assets on the island.

Trump claimed success and said he had “totally obliterated” his targets while keeping the oil terminal itself intact.

If this is true, it is important for two reasons.

First, while Kharg is more an industrial island than a militarized one, it is nonetheless important.

Because the Iranian shore of the Persian Gulf is too shallow for large tankers, the Islamic Republic pipes most of its oil to Kharg for loading on tankers more than a dozen miles out in the Gulf, where navigation is easier.

Today, 96 percent of Iran’s oil exports pass through Kharg, making it, rather than the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s chief chokepoint.

Destroying guard posts on the island sets the stage for U.S. forces to occupy it should Trump order the Pentagon to do so. Seizing an unmanned island is far less risky than staging a landing on an island, where the landing parties would be exposed.

Indeed, while Trump may criticize the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, he appears to now replicate part of late Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s strategy of protecting oil facilities to hasten the eventual revival of the post-war economy.

Second, any occupation of Kharg will insure the energy markets from a nightmare scenario of Kharg’s destruction.

Here, it appears that Trump and his planners have internalized a lesson learned the hard way from President George H.W. Bush and his 1991 liberation of Kuwait.

That air war and ground attack took only 100 hours before the U.S. achieved the limited but well-defined end goal of pushing Iraq’s Republican Guards out of Kuwaiti territory.

What the Iraqis did on their way out, however, caught the Central Intelligence Agency off guard.

By setting approximately 700 Kuwaiti oil fields ablaze, the defeated Iraqis hoped to punish their would-be “nineteenth province” and also the international community that sought energy stability.

Extinguishing the flames cost Kuwait $1.5 billion, perhaps $3.6 billion, in 2026 dollars. The fires consumed 5 million barrels per day at their peak. In July 1990, oil was around $20 per barrel.

After Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, oil shot up to $28 per barrel. The sabotage of Kuwaiti fields led the price to increase another 43 percent or so to $40 per barrel by October 1990.

The Islamic Republic’s leadership is desperate, bitter, and millenarian in a Shi’i sense.

With the possible exception of Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, whom evidence suggests seeks a separate deal, and perhaps Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, many regime elements would rather see Iran and world energy markets destroyed than allow a smooth transition to a post-Islamic Republic order.

If the bombing of Kharg Island preserves the terminal and paves the way for the facility’s safeguarding, then Trump will have achieved a major success by setting the stage for a smoother, post-Islamic Republic future.