It’s a 20-square-kilometre strip of land that has been at the centre of military plotting by a US president, bungled bombing raids by Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces and an illegal arms deal by the CIA.
Now Kharg Island, a barren coral outcrop in the Persian Gulf, could be back in the line of fire.
It hosts Iran’s largest oil terminal and looms as a potential target of Israeli strikes as the two Middle East military powers enter a dangerous spiral of tit-for-tat attacks.
US President Joe Biden has revealed US talks with Israel over possible strikes on Iranian oil facilities in reprisal for a barrage of nearly 200 ballistic missiles on Tuesday night.
He told reporters: “We’re discussing that. I think that would be a little … anyway.”
Mr Biden has described the Iranian bombardment as “ineffective” due to Israel’s much-vaunted “Iron Dome” missile defences.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to answer Iran with force, while Mr Biden has urged the key US ally to act “proportionally” and opposed any strike on Iran’s nuclear sites.
Kharg island, which is 25 kilometres off the Iran coast and the dispatch point for 90 per cent of the country’s oil exports, has been floated as an alternative target.
The speculation drove a spike in short-term crude oil prices, and some Iranian state-owned oil supertankers upped anchor and sailed away in a show of caution.
Israel is not the first country to contemplate bombarding the tiny island in a view to severing Iran’s key economic artery.
But it would be the first if it managed to pull it off.
US once feared ‘worldwide oil crisis’ from Kharg Island attack
Almost 45 years ago to the day, US president Jimmy Carter considered attacking Kharg Island in retaliation for Iran holding US hostages.
Declassified records of a national security meeting show US military officials at first thought it would take “very little” to seize control of the island, “probably the most critical facility in Iran”.
But hours before the meeting, they found out it wouldn’t be so easy.
The US military discovered Iran, which boasts the largest army in the Middle East, had stationed about 250 soldiers on the island, another 250 air defence personnel and up to another 500 military personnel involved in a hovercraft program.
Former US president Jimmy Carter, who turned 100 this week, considered attacking Iran’s Kharg Island in 1979. (Reuters: Eric Thayer)
Mr Carter “wondered about an aerial attack on the island” because “occupying Iranian territory would arouse the opposition of the entire world”.
His defence secretary, Harold Brown, noted an air strike would be “more permanent since it would destroy the installation” and that Iran’s “whole livelihood and economy depended on the oil exports from Kharg Island”.
Mr Carter was “not sure” that France, the UK, Japan and others could handle the impact on oil supplies, “especially if other oil-producing nations closed down their own operations as a sign of sympathy”.
CIA boss Stansfield Turner suggested “simply mining the waters around Kharg Island”.
An Iranian man works on an oil production platform at the Soroush oil fields in the Persian gulf west of Iran. (Reuters: Raheb Homavandi)
But national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski said that “the results of that would be to simply punish our friends” seeking oil.
He warned that “going after Kharg Island would create a worldwide oil crisis”.
The US attack plan went no further.
Island armed with US guided missiles, Swiss anti-aircraft cannons
In 1983, the CIA told US president Ronald Reagan that Iraq — then at war with Iran — was likely to resort to bombing raids on facilities including Kharg island, “Iran’s oil lifeline”.
A declassified report by then-CIA director Wiliam Casey said if that happened, international oil tankers would initially stay away from the island.
But Iran would likely be able to entice them back by cutting oil prices.
Pipes leading downhill toward the Kharg Island jetty, pictured in July 1971. (AP Photo: Horst Faas)
The following year, the CIA reported that “Iranian defensive measures on Kharg Island have remained at a high state of readiness” for almost four years, following Iraqi threats.
It detailed the serious weaponry on the island.
Its “major defenses” included US-built HAWK guided missile batteries, eight Swiss-made anti-aircraft cannons with radar and at least another eight Soviet-made anti-aircraft gun positions “dispersed around the island perimeter”.
Bombs fell ‘harmlessly into the water’
Iraq finally attacked Kharg Island in 1985 but its heavy defences led to Sadam Hussein’s forces botching two bombing raids.
In a news clipping cited by the CIA, the Washington Post reported that Iraqi bombers had “missed all targets” on the island with “the bombs falling harmlessly into the water”.
The Iraqis, in French-made Mirage F1 fighter-bombers, had flown high to avoid ground fire.
The Iraqi air force had more success flying lower in two earlier raids, destroying an oil pumping complex in the island’s east.
But US officials reportedly said this failed to cripple Iran’s oil exports because it had had another “small island pumping station [which] can pump far more oil than Iran is exporting now”.
Unnamed US officials had cited the “formidable air defence around Kharg island” including the US HAWK missiles.
Link to bungled illegal CIA arms deal
A couple of months later, in November 1985, Kharg Island featured in events surrounding a bungled secret arms-for-hostages deal that would later form part of a major US political scandal.
This was the Iran-Contra affair, in which the CIA was involved in illegal arms deals with Iran in exchange for US hostages.
The pivotal figure in the scandal, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North — later president of the powerful National Rifle Association — signed off on the transfer of “sensitive material” to Iran.
These were HAWK missiles — and they came from Israel.
A declassified US government inquiry report found the secret operation was dogged by missteps.
These included the US delivering the missiles three days late, and coming up short on the shipment with only 18 HAWK missiles.
“In addition, they bore Israeli markings,” the report said.
This “caused great unhappiness in Iran and had disastrous consequences for the emerging relationship”, the inquiry board was told.
The missiles themselves failed to “meet Iranian military requirements”.
Iran test-fired one of them “at an Iraqi aircraft flying over Kharg Island to determine the missile’s effectiveness”, the report said.
It then sent the remaining 17 missiles back to Israel.
The report noted that when CIA deputy director John McMahon found out about his agency’s role in the shipment a few days later, he “directed the CIA General Counsel to prepare a Covert Action Finding providing Presidential authorization for the CIA’s past support and any future support to the Iran initiative”.
But the operation failed.
No hostages were ever released as a result.
Israel ‘capable of striking Iranian targets without concern’
The decades-old factors that foiled plans to cripple Iran by smashing its oil lifeline at Kharg Island seem unlikely to pose an obstacle to Israel, according to Levi West, an Australian National University researcher on terrorism and counter-terrorism.
Mr West said Israel was “capable of targeting, of striking targets within Iran without too much concern”.
“There is a challenge in getting fighter jets home again, however, with the acquiescence or cooperation of any of the regional Sunni powers, Sunni countries [such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Egypt], then it’s entirely feasible,” he said.
“If you’ve got friendly airspace, you can refuel in the air.
“So the Israeli Air Force can do that.
“That being said, striking in conventional terms is not the only option available to Israel.”
Israel had a “long history of using roundabouts and asymmetric methods or intelligence operations to target really quite specific capabilities [and] individuals”.
This meant Israel would likely be able to “flick switches” on lethal intelligence operations “within Iran — next week”, he said.
“But I think anything more than air strikes is highly unlikely. Everyone can see that the Israelis are pretty spread at the moment.”