‘No defence, we could take it easily’: Trump on Iran's Kharg Island

Washington: US President Donald Trump said in an interview with the Financial Times on Sunday that he could take Iran's Kharg Island "very easily."

Kharg Island, located off the west coast of Iran, is a vital oil terminal for the Middle Eastern country and is being eyed by the Pentagon for ground operations, though the United States insisted it would stop short of a full-scale invasion.

When asked about the state of Iranian defence on the island, Trump said, "I don't think they have any defence. We could take it very easily."

He claimed that the US-Israel war had achieved regime change in Iran, even as he assured that he would "make a deal" with the Iranians.

"I think we'll make a deal with them, pretty sure... but we've had regime change," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, citing the number of Iranian leaders killed in the month-long war.

"We're dealing with different people than anybody's dealt with before. It's a whole different group of people. So I would consider that regime change," Trump said.

Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of former supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an airstrike at the start of the war on February 28, was tapped to be the country's third supreme leader since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Ever since the conflict kicked off with US-Israeli strikes on Iran, Tehran has effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 per cent of the world's oil and gas transits.

The closure has sent global oil prices soaring, but Trump said that relief was on the way in the form of concessions from Iran, starting with the imminent passage of several tankers through the key waterway.

"They gave us, I think, out of a sign of respect, 20 boats of oil, big, big boats of oil going through the Hormuz Strait," Trump said, adding that the shipments would be "taking place starting tomorrow morning, over the next couple of days."