Trump says he’d like to ‘take the oil in Iran,’ adds US may seize Kharg Island

US President Donald Trump says he’d like to “take the oil in Iran,” and muses about capturing Kharg Island, in an interview with the Financial Times.

“To be honest with you, my favorite 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 says, likening the situation to Venezuela, where the US captured the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, and hopes to exert control over its oil.

He also declines to say whether he would approve an operation to seize Kharg Island, the export terminal for 90 percent of Iran’s oil shipments, which could be key to opening up the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has blocked the strait, a key pathway for the world’s oil supply.

“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” Trump tells FT. “It would also mean we had to be there for a while.”

But he says the US has made progress in its strikes on Iran, and says the US could reach a deal to end the fighting with Iran soon.

“We’ve got about 3,000 targets left — we’ve bombed 13,000 targets — and another couple of thousand targets to go,” he says. “A deal could be made fairly quickly.”