For decades, the Iranian regime has financed terrorism, regional militias, and its powerful security apparatus through one primary source: oil. Cut off that revenue, and the regime’s power structure begins to unravel.
At the center of that economic lifeline stands a small island in the Persian Gulf: Kharg Island.
An island only one-third the size of Manhattan controls virtually the entire flow of Iran’s crude oil exports. Nearly one billion barrels of oil pass through its terminals each year. Roughly ninety percent of Iran’s exports are processed and shipped from this single strategic location.
Whoever controls Kharg Island controls the financial oxygen of the Iranian regime.
For years, analysts have focused on Iran’s missiles, its military forces, and its network of regional proxies. Yet the regime’s true vulnerability is not military. It is economic.
Terrorism is a business. Commit a single act of terror, and you receive thousands of headlines across the world. Instant global publicity. Meanwhile, the regimes behind those acts accumulate wealth while their populations suffer.
Terrorists fight for money
Several years ago, during a conversation with King Abdullah, I asked him what ultimately determines which side terrorists will fight for. His answer was blunt: money. Whoever pays them is the side they fight for.
That reality explains why Kharg Island is so strategically important.
Located about sixteen miles off the Iranian coast in the Persian Gulf, the island is not easy for Iran to defend against a major power. At the same time, it is relatively easy for a superior naval force to isolate and control.
This is why the most significant strategic move may not be bombing Kharg Island. The far more consequential possibility is controlling it.
President Donald Trump built his reputation on understanding leverage. As the author of Trump: The Art of the Deal, he understands that the strongest negotiating position comes from controlling the leverage before negotiations begin.
Control of Kharg Island would represent extraordinary leverage over Tehran.
Without the oil revenue flowing through the island, the Iranian regime would struggle to finance the Revolutionary Guards, its regional militias, and the security forces that keep the regime in power. The entire system that funds repression at home and aggression abroad would begin to weaken.
The Iranian people themselves are not the enemy. In fact, many are desperate for freedom. But that freedom cannot emerge while the regime continues to control the financial resources that sustain its power.
History offers a reminder. It was a nationwide oil strike that became the decisive factor in the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979. When the oil stopped flowing, the political structure that depended on it could no longer survive.
Kharg Island today represents the economic pressure point of the Iranian regime. Disrupt the flow of oil through this single location, and the entire system begins to fracture.
The implications extend far beyond Iran.
Countries such as China that rely heavily on Iranian oil exports would suddenly face a dramatically altered energy reality. Control of the island could shift the balance of global energy influence and strengthen the strategic position of the United States and its allies.
Sometimes, the most powerful move in geopolitics is not destroying an adversary’s infrastructure but controlling the asset that keeps that adversary alive.
Kharg Island may prove to be exactly that asset.
The writer has written 120 books and is a number one New York Times bestselling author. He is the founder of the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem, the Ten Boom Museum in the Netherlands, and Churches United with Israel, the largest Christian Zionist network in America, with more than 30 million followers.