A senior Iranian official has warned that any US attack on Iranian territory – “not just on Kharg Island but anywhere in the country” – would receive a response that “will be recorded in history,” as President Donald Trump threatened to seize Iran’s main oil export hub.
Ebrahim Azizi, head of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, on Thursday dismissed Trump’s latest warnings as the bluster of a “delusional and confused” leader who has failed to achieve any of his stated war aims.
Azizi said Trump has secured no gains from the 12-day war in June and the subsequent 40-day war, failing to achieve the stated US objectives of breaking up Iran, forcing its surrender, or overthrowing the government.
“The delusional president of America should know that if he takes any miscalculated action on Iranian soil – not just on Kharg Island but anywhere in the country – he will receive a response that will be recorded in history,” Azizi said.
Speaking to Fox News on Wednesday, Trump said his “preference has always been, take Kharg Island,” a strategic outcrop about 20 miles off Iran’s coast that handled roughly 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports before the war began on February 28.
“I don’t know that America has the stomach for it, to be honest with you,” Trump said, adding that “you’d make a fortune.”
In a separate post on his Truth Social platform, Trump warned that the United States would attack Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT,” claiming that Iran’s navy, air force, radar systems, and air defenses had been “almost wiped out.”
“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, much like we have with Venezuela – which is working out brilliantly for both Venezuela and the United States of America,” Trump wrote.
The US president told Fox News that the United States had dropped “$250 million worth of bombs” on Iran overnight. “They’re really in submission, they just don’t know it yet,” he said.
Azizi, who said he had personally visited Kharg Island with parliamentary colleagues, asserted that Iran’s armed forces are “highly prepared” across all national territory, including the strategic island.
“The level of readiness of our armed forces there is so high that I believe one of the things that may become evident in the future is precisely this maximum level of military preparedness on the island,” he said.
He said more than 9,000 US forces have fled the Persian Gulf, while American warships and equipment have withdrawn to the Indian Ocean and beyond. He said that Iran has destroyed more than 14 US bases in the region, inflicting a “humiliating defeat” on American forces.
Ali Fadavi, a senior advisor to the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), said Iran is “on the verge of a great victory” that will overturn global power dynamics shaped by “the world’s malicious forces and the Great Satan.”
“For months, we have been fighting the world’s superpower,” Fadavi said.
“The entire world sees the Great Satan as a superpower, and the idea of fighting such a power does not exist in the minds of most people. But the Iranian nation has shown great resistance and has managed to bring this power to its knees.”
Fadavi described this as a source of pride for the Islamic Revolution, the resistance front, the Palestinian people, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Ansarullah movement, and Iraqi resistance groups, vowing that the resistance will continue “with strength” and achieve victory.
He said the United States is targeting innocent civilians, including schoolgirls and boys, echoing Iranian officials’ condemnation of a US strike this week that destroyed drinking water reservoirs in Hormozgan province.
That attack left more than 20,000 residents without access to water in temperatures exceeding 45 degrees Celsius.
About one-third the size of Manhattan, the Kharg Island features extensive harbor facilities capable of accommodating supertankers and has storage capacity of approximately 31 million barrels.
According to Pentagon and administration officials cited by CNN, a US attempt to occupy Kharg Island have been repeatedly shelved because the operation is considered “too risky”, requiring massive American casualties, with victory “heavily uncertain given the target’s high security cover”. – Press TV.
