DUBAI, Sept 5 (Reuters) – An Iranian tanker was hit by U.S. forces on Saturday near Iran’s key oil export hub, \u200cKharg Island, in the Gulf, the semi-official Iranian news agency Tasnim \u200creported.<\/p>\n
According to a Tasnim correspondent from Kharg, the tanker was hit by four U.S. \u200bmissiles in the area of Kharg Island’s anchorage.<\/p>\n
Tasnim quoted local sources as saying there were no casualties and the tanker’s crew was being evacuated.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate official announcement by Iranian authorities and U.S. Central Command did \u200cnot immediately respond to \u2060a request for comment.<\/p>\n
U.S. President Donald Trump said on August 31 in a one-line social media post accompanied by \u2060an AI-generated video that Kharg Island was being “blown to smithereens”. Iranian authorities have vowed a strong response if Kharg is attacked.<\/p>\n
Iran is the third-largest \u200bproducer in \u200bthe Organization of the Petroleum Exporting \u200bCountries and exported 90% of \u200cits crude via Kharg Island before the war, but flows have been disrupted since a U.S. blockade of Iranian oil exports began in mid-April.<\/p>\n
Trump said on June 11 that he wanted to take over Kharg Island, but then said a threatened U.S. military operation there was off the \u200ctable for now, days before Tehran \u200band Washington signed an interim agreement aimed \u200bat ending the war on \u200bJune 17.<\/p>\n
A U.S. attack on Kharg would heap further \u200cpressure on Iran’s oil industry and \u200bits wider economy, \u200bwhich is already reeling from the U.S. naval blockade.<\/p>\n
The U.S. imposed its blockade on Iranian ports after Iran effectively shut the Strait \u200bof Hormuz, a key \u200cwaterway that carried one-fifth of the world’s oil supply before \u200bthe war.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Tom Hogue, William \u200bMallard, Tomasz Janowski and Sharon Singleton)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUBAI, Sept 5 (Reuters) – An Iranian tanker was hit by U.S. forces on Saturday near Iran’s key…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[359,34,361,8515,2601,351,683],"class_list":["post-279103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-gulf","tag-iran","tag-iranian","tag-kharg","tag-kharg-island","tag-reuters","tag-u-s"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117218550984454849","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}