Kharg Island, located off the west coast of Iran, is a vital oil terminal for the Middle Eastern country and is reportedly being eyed by the Pentagon for ground operations, though the United States insisted it would stop short of a full-scale invasion.
“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” Trump told the Financial Times in an interview on Sunday.
“It would also mean we had to be there (on Kharg Island) for a while.”
When asked about the state of Iranian defence on the island, Trump said, "I don't think they have any defence. We could take it very easily."
To get an amphibious invasion force to Kharg would mean transiting the Strait of Hormuz and most of the Arab Gulf. Experts say that holding the island would also be a challenge, because in addition to its missiles and drones, it would be well within artillery range from the Iranian mainland.
The US president compared the potential move to Venezuela, where the US intends to control the oil industry “indefinitely” following its kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro in January.
"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.”
Trump has also claimed that Iran had agreed to allow 20 ships carrying oil through the Strait of Hormuz starting Monday morning and continuing over the next few days as a “present”.
“They gave us 10 ships through the strait,” he said. “Now they’re giving 20”.
Trump claimed that Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker, had authorized the additional tankers.
“He’s the one who authorized the ships to me,” Trump told the Financial Times.
Earlier, Ghalibaf dismissed the idea that any direct talks with the US were taking place in Pakistan as a cover after more US troops were sent to the Middle East.
"The enemy publicly sends messages of negotiation and dialogue while secretly planning a ground attack," Ghalibaf said in a statement carried by the official IRNA news agency.
"Our men are waiting for the arrival of the American soldiers on the ground to set them on fire and punish their regional allies once and for all," he added.
The recent Trump remarks come as the foreign ministers of Egypt, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan were meeting in Islamabad to push for a formula to start talks between Washington and Tehran to de-escalate the regional conflict as a prelude to ending the US-Israel war on Iran that engulfed the entire Persian Gulf region for a month.
In separate remarks to reporters aboard Air Force One late Sunday, Trump insisted that the US was negotiating “directly and indirectly” with Iran, though Iran has insisted that it has not been in any talks with Washington.
"We’re doing extremely well in that negotiation, but you never know with Iran because we negotiate with them and then we always have to blow them up,” Trump said.
He also claimed the US-Israel war had achieved "regime change" in Iran.
"I think we'll make a deal with them, pretty sure...but we've had regime change," he said, citing the number of Iranian leaders killed in the month-long war.
"We're dealing with different people than anybody's dealt with before. It's a whole different group of people. So I would consider that regime change," Trump said.
Trump's remarks came as the USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship carrying around 3,500 Marines and sailors, arrived in the Middle East on Friday.
The Washington Post reported the Pentagon was preparing plans for weeks of ground operations -- potentially including raids on sites near the Strait of Hormuz -- though the US President has yet to approve any deployment.
Iran says it has closed the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane which previously accounted for a quarter of the world's seaborne oil trade and a fifth of liquefied natural gas shipments, to vessels from hostile nations.
According to a Wall Street Journal report citing unnamed US officials, Trump is weighing a military operation to extract nearly 1,000 pounds (454kg) of uranium from Iran.
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