Inside Kharg Island, Iran’s oil lifeline under threat — The Take

[0:00] Today, a small island carrying the weight of a war. [0:04] If Iran chooses poorly, then they will have a blockade and bombs dropping on infrastructure, [0:12] power and energy. [0:14] With the U.S. saying it's ready to restart combat if Iran doesn't agree to a deal, what [0:19] could that mean for the people of Qarg Island? [0:22] I'm Oliga Bilal, and this is The Take. [0:30] Hey there. [0:31] As you're watching today's episode, leave us a comment letting us know what you think [0:35] and what stories you want us to do next. [0:38] And if you're listening on a podcast app, leave us a review. [0:41] It helps other people find the show. [0:46] My name is Seamus Malik Afsali. [0:48] I'm a journalist and writer based in New York City. [0:52] And I am the co-host of the Turbulence podcast with Dylan Saba. [0:56] Seamus, welcome to The Take. [0:58] It's good to have you. [0:59] I've followed your work for a long time now, and I'm excited to get into this with you, [1:04] especially because today you are taking us to Qarg Island in Iran, a place the administration [1:11] of U.S. President Donald Trump has previously bragged about obliterating. [1:17] What should we know about Qarg Island? [1:19] Qarg Island is an island off the coast of Kuwait, nearer to the coast of Kuwait and Iraq, [1:27] that is owned and administered by the Islam Republic of Iran. [1:30] The estimates range from about 8,000 to about 20,000 people live on the island, most of whom [1:37] are in the oil industry. [1:39] Qarg, uh, it handles about 80 to 90 percent of Iran's oil exports. [1:46] Wow. [1:47] And it is very, very important, uh, to the Iranian economy. [1:53] Okay. [1:54] So this island has been part of this two-stage pressure campaign in the U.S.-Israeli war on [2:01] Iran. [2:02] First, to threaten or strike the source of Iran's oil exports. [2:06] And as you said, Qarg is its main oil export terminal. [2:11] And then also to choke the roots that move the oil. [2:16] You're speaking on Thursday morning, Eastern Time. [2:19] And as of this moment, the U.S. is telling Iran it is willing to negotiate. [2:25] But there's a but. [2:27] It's also enforcing this naval blockade of Iran's ports in the Strait of Hormuz. [2:31] So a blockade of the blockade. [2:33] What do we know about how that's going, how it's actually hitting Iran? [2:36] Well, I mean, the immediate economic effects of this blockade aren't super clear yet. [2:43] It has only been enforced for, I think, about two days at this point. [2:47] TITCOM is claiming that there is no naval traffic going out from Iranian ports. [2:53] That 96% of Iranian trade is done by the sea. [2:55] Therefore, the effects of this are going to be immediate. [2:59] The Iranian media has been saying that, of course, necessary food supplies are stockpiled. [3:06] That there is not going to be any major ramifications regarding this for months. [3:11] That remains to be seen. [3:12] But right now, several oil tankers have apparently been able to transit the Strait of Hormuz just [3:19] fine. [3:21] Though I cannot imagine that the way that Iran has been going about this before, where they [3:27] were able to export even more oil during this war than before, I don't think that is [3:33] going to be the case for very much longer, regardless if the blockade is complete or incomplete or whatever. [3:41] The irony, though, is, of course, we're in the middle of a fragile ceasefire, right? [3:50] And the U.S. has said just today, the secretary, Pete Hegseth, said the U.S. is ready to restart [3:56] combat if Iran does not agree to a deal. [3:58] We are locked and loaded on your critical dual-use infrastructure, on your remaining power generation, [4:05] and on your energy industry. [4:08] And so this blockade is a way to pressure them into reaching a deal with the U.S. [4:14] But is it also a violation of the ceasefire? [4:18] What do we know? [4:19] Well, it's not immediately clear what the ceasefire is even supposed to be. [4:26] All of this talk about proposals and the basis of talks was conducted without anything being [4:33] specifically on paper. [4:35] And the Iranian military said that this was a precursor to a violation of the ceasefire. [4:41] If CENTCOM, if the American military decides to maybe fire on Iranian ships or try to seize [4:46] Iranian ships to say nothing of the other ships that they've threatened to interdict, who have [4:51] simply paid tolls to the Iranian government to pass through the straits safely, that may [4:56] become something. [4:57] But for now, as long as Iran itself or Iranian interests are not being bombarded [5:04] by the U.S. military, I don't think Iran will consider it enough to completely tear up the [5:11] ceasefire. [5:12] No. [5:13] Hmm. [5:14] Okay. [5:15] So then let's zoom back onto some of the people who might be most affected if the ceasefire [5:21] was to be torn up. [5:23] Let's go back to Card Island, which has been attacked twice now by the U.S. and Donald Trump [5:29] has threatened to take it over. [5:31] Why has the U.S. had its sights on this island in particular? [5:36] And what would happen to Iran if it was seized? [5:40] Well, Khark has been in American sights for a very long time before this war as part of [5:47] any inevitable war plan with Iran. [5:51] The idea being that if you easily seize this island, you know, the vast majority of Iran's [5:57] ability to export oil is taken out in a single swoop. [6:01] And any capitulation would be very, very near incoming. [6:07] I have a feeling that they are no longer prioritizing Khark in the way that they were before, mainly [6:15] because of the threat posed by, I mean, not just the issue of occupying another island, [6:21] simply even a small part of Iranian territory, but what kind of fire American soldiers would [6:29] have to deal with from the mainland, from defenses on the island. [6:33] I think that's why they prioritized blocking the Strait of Hormuz, that blockade itself. [6:40] There are also other islands in this strait as well. [6:44] Are they as strategic? [6:45] Somewhat, not as strategically important to the United States. [6:51] There had been chatter about potentially seizing Lorak Island, which has a slightly smaller [6:57] population than Khark, which is where most of these tolls have been collected. [7:02] There has been talk about maybe seizing Hormuz Island or Qashem Island, which has hundreds [7:09] of thousands of people on it, alongside a couple of Iranian military installations. [7:15] Many of these, though, they still have the same exposure risks to the American military to [7:21] say nothing of the issue of civilian occupation and the dangers and the—I mean, not just the [7:30] dangers, but the immorality of that, I would argue. [7:33] Hmm. [7:34] So, Seamus, I heard some reassuring analysis from you there in which you said it looks like [7:39] that it's—Kharg Island is no longer paraphrasing here, but it may be not a point of contention [7:47] at this moment. [7:48] But for the people that live and work there, I wonder if that is enough reassurance, right? [7:54] Because we know there's about 8,000 to 20,000 people who live on the island, who work and go to [7:59] the island for work in the oil industry. [8:02] Who are they? [8:03] And what was life like there prior to this state of conflict? [8:08] Well, Kharg was never a tourist island like other islands of the Persian Gulf, like Qish, [8:16] for instance, which is a major tourist hotspot. [8:19] As I said before, most of these people work in the oil industry, and most of them live in the single [8:25] city on the island, Kharg itself. It had been a major trading post for most of its history, and now it has [8:33] become this extraordinarily important piece of the Iranian economy. I think how strange this whole [8:40] process was became very evident when Kharg was bombed for the very first time. And a lot of these [8:47] residents, when they were interviewed by BBC Persian, they said, where are these military installations [8:52] that the US military is bombing? Because they're right inside this city, which is very normally [8:58] peaceful and does not have a dedicated military base. What it has is, of course, the city and a [9:04] civilian airport, which was then bombarded and made it so escape from the island, as many people would [9:11] probably be inclined to do, was cut off. To the degree that's been repaired, I'm not sure at this point. [9:18] Hmm. Seamus, this raises a question for me in that we talk about the people who are questioning [9:29] where these military installations are, right? But something you point out in a piece that you did [9:34] for Truthout is that if you watch most US media coverage, you would think that this is an uninhabited [9:42] piece of land that we're talking about. And there are also hundreds of thousands of other people who [9:47] live along Iran's Gulf Coast and inhabit islands in Iranian territorial waters. Why do you think it [9:53] is that these residents, these people have been missing from these stories? [9:58] Well, the Iranian civilian populace, it can be invoked as something to fight a war over, [10:08] but it can never actually be treated as a real thing. Because then when they're killed, [10:14] when they're massacred, it inevitably raises questions that the American public and the [10:19] American government especially is not prepared to deal with. The war that they are trying to wage [10:26] is one where no Americans are killed because that exposes too many things. It raises too many [10:33] specters of quagmires that we have been involved in before, but also no civilian ever has to die. [10:39] Everyone who is killed is either a government agent or some sort of IRGC commander. And that has [10:46] resulted in Kharg going from being this place that is important to the oil industry, and because the [10:53] oil industry is inevitably so critical to the Iranian government and therefore the IRGC, which is a [10:57] designated terrorist organization, that everyone on this island is somehow within the IRGC network and [11:03] therefore their blood is forfeit. You saw it in more of a, I don't know what you call it, more of a [11:14] sanitized way, maybe that's the best word for it, on places like CBS, where they brought in people [11:20] saying, well, there's no real civilian center on the island. [11:24] It's a dozen plus miles off the coast of Iran. It can be isolated. There's no civilian population [11:30] center there. It really is just oil infrastructure and until recently the military means to guard it. [11:35] So it would be no matter if you just tried to corner it, if you tried to blockade it. [11:43] But certain other people on channels that are more aligned with Donald Trump, places like Fox News, [11:49] there are no civilians, apparently. Everything is closed off. It's a military, full-scale military [11:55] center, and therefore it's not just not a danger to Americans. It's actually imperative to the military [12:03] endeavor that is being undertaken here to take Kharg and to destroy everything on the island. [12:08] Hmm. Well, this sort of answers my question, but I wonder if you can elaborate on what the risks are [12:19] to civilians when their home is treated as a piece of infrastructure and not a place where actual [12:25] human beings live. Well, we've been very lucky so far that, at least from what the government, [12:32] what the Iranian media has been saying, that there haven't been any civilian casualties just yet [12:38] on Kharg, but buildings have been destroyed on that island. And in other places inside Iran where no [12:44] distinction has been made about military and civilian infrastructure. You saw the massacres that [12:50] happened at Meenab and at the volleyball hall elsewhere in the country on that same day. [12:56] Apartment buildings that get leveled without any sort of consideration. There is massive risk and no one [13:04] that I could detect in the American media, whether they were civilian analysts or foreign military [13:11] officials. None of them seem to have any sort of consideration for this. The one piece that I saw [13:18] that really took this into account was a former NATO commander saying that the population needed to be [13:23] controlled, that they could preserve their safety essentially by just locking them in their homes by a [13:29] military force. Everything is deeply, deeply risky to the population because they are being considered as a [13:39] singular entity, either to be controlled or literally killed. [13:44] Yeah. Well, we're talking about an island of some, what, 8,000 people, but it feels like this [13:51] is telling a bigger story about how this war is being fought. What is that story? [13:56] I mean, this is an extension, I think, of how the war in Gaza was fought and how the war in [14:08] Lebanon was fought and is being fought right now. There are no, I think, exterminationist plans for Iran [14:17] in the same way that Israel has them for Gaza and for southern Lebanon at the very least, but it is being [14:22] fought very much as Israel would like it to be. That means everything is up for destruction in ways that [14:33] would never have been, I think, considered so openly before. The threatened destruction of power plants, [14:41] the double tap strikes on bridges, full-blown threatening of destruction of civilization, [14:51] talking about these islands in particular as being obliterated without any sort of consideration for who [14:57] lives there or even trying to make the distinction, even in rhetoric. As I said before, everything, [15:04] everything is on the table. Everything is up for grabs. And the line between civilian and military [15:12] is not just obscured, but it's been completely destroyed with no consideration made whatsoever. [15:17] Well, Seamus, Pakistani officials who are acting as mediators here are expecting, they say, [15:25] a major breakthrough in talks between Iran and the United States. And I'm wondering if that gives you [15:35] hope. What are you expecting might happen next? I still have very limited hopes for where these [15:44] ceasefire negotiations come in Pakistan, even if there is a temporary extension to that ceasefire to [15:50] allow for more talks. The general trend when Iranian negotiators come to the table with the Americans [15:59] is that when they give an inch, the Americans take a mile. When they spoke with the same team, [16:07] essentially, when they spoke with Witkoff last year, they offered up three years of a pause on nuclear [16:13] enrichment, though it would still require a lot of political considerations to be made domestically. [16:18] But when Witkoff heard that, he still demanded five, and then he came back and he demanded more years. [16:24] And then the talks completely failed from there. And now that the Iranians are apparently offering up [16:30] five years of enrichment halting, Vance is saying that they are demanding 20 years. And there is no [16:38] evidence that I can detect, even though the Iranians and the Americans are both saying that there are [16:43] substantive discussions that they are really any closer to bridging that fundamental gap between [16:52] their dual demands. You have intertwining identities that bring you even closer to the story than just [17:03] your journalism hat. And I wonder if you could tell us about that and how it connects you to what you're [17:09] reporting on. [17:09] Look, I grew up Iranian and Irish. I had the notion of anti-imperialism very present as I grew up, [17:26] talking about war, the threat of war. And I lived in Lewadon for a time as well. I had the great honor of [17:34] being able to live in Beirut from 2023 to 2024. And I remember living there in particular and seeing [17:47] all this coverage of the city that I was living in, the country that I was living in, how Beirut and [17:54] the southern suburbs were spoken about as dehumanized military strongholds, singularly as such. [18:07] And I am very aware of the consequences of talking about inhabited places as if they are uninhabited. [18:18] Maybe not out of malice, but simply out of journalistic shorthand. [18:23] That creates an environment where Israel, where the United States don't have to think about that either. [18:31] And I think it is imperative for other people, not just journalists, to remember these things. [18:39] That these are cities, that these are towns, that these are inhabited places where people live and [18:44] where they want to continue living. And when you decide to simplify all of that to strategic objectives, [18:55] then you lose that critical, critical element that you were talking about people. And that gives other [19:02] people room to maneuver and to maneuver in very malicious ways. [19:07] Well, Seamus, thank you for helping us to remember. I appreciate it. [19:14] Thank you. [19:15] Thank you.