President Donald Trump on Sunday said he is open to taking over Iran’s oil industry, as his administration did in Venezuela.
“To be honest with you, my favourite thing is to take the oil in Iran, but some stupid people back in the US say: ‘Why are you doing that?’ But they’re stupid people,” he told the Financial Times.
The president’s remarks came hours before he said he would be open to obliterating Iran’s critical infrastructure if the country does not swiftly agree to a U.S. peace proposal and open the Strait of Hormuz, which is a critical waterway for transporting oil. The United States has thus far avoided targeting such infrastructure, including at Kharg Island, the distribution point for 90% of Iran’s oil, as doing so would destabilise long-term international energy security.
“Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched,’” Trump said in a Monday morning post to Truth Social.
If the U.S. does not blow up Kharg Island, Trump said his “preference would be to take the oil” at the location. On Sunday, he said Washington could take over Kharg Island “very easily.” The president’s comment indicates Washington is eying a similar strategy to its approach in Venezuela, where U.S. officials are looking to rebuild the country’s once-vibrant oil industry, after taking it over in early January.
“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” Trump told the Financial Times. “It would also mean we had to be there [in Kharg Island] for a while.”
Publicly, Iranian officials have maintained a hostile posture amid peace talks, citing in part Washington’s sweeping military buildup in the region.
“The enemy, openly, sends messages of negotiation and dialogue, but secretly is planning a ground attack,” Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said Sunday.
The U.S. is “unaware that our men are waiting for American soldiers to enter on the ground so they can set them ablaze and punish their regional partners forever,” he added, according to state media outlet IRNA and state-affiliated Tasnim.
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But the president argued on Sunday that Iran is in a weakened position, making it vulnerable to an energy takeover. The U.S. has bombed 13,000 out of roughly 16,000 targets in Iran, he said, and the country has now allowed 20 oil tankers to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Publicly, Iran has said the strategic channel connected to the Persian Gulf remains closed, and the country has downplayed peace talks with the U.S., but Trump suggested that Iran could be closer to caving to Washington than it is projecting.
“A deal could be made fairly quickly,” he said.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said U.S. involvement in the shipping channel is unavoidable, saying that the U.S. will have to “retake” the strait.
“We are seeing more and more ships go through on a daily basis,” Bessent said on Fox News on Monday morning. “But over time, the U.S. is going to retake control of the straits, and there will be freedom of navigation, whether it is through U.S. escorts or a multinational escort.”
