President Trump said on social media that the U.S. military had conducted a large bombing raid on Friday on Kharg Island, a key port and Iran’s oil export hub. Mr. Trump said the raid had “totally obliterated” military forces on the island, but that he had directed the Pentagon not to damage its oil infrastructure, “for reasons of decency.”
The global price of oil has surged by 40 percent since the United States and Israel began the war with Iran last month.
The strikes on Kharg Island targeted all of the military infrastructure on the island, a military official said. U.S. Air Force bombers struck missile storage sites, as well as sites that housed Iranian mines, the official said. He said the United States did not target the economic infrastructure on the island.
Mr. Trump had said earlier this week that seizing Kharg Island’s fuel depot was not “high on the list” of priorities in his war on Iran.
In a Fox News Radio interview that aired on Friday morning, he added that the island was “one of so many different things, and I can change my mind in seconds.”
Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent for The Times. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent.
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