Live. Trump says US has ‘totally obliterated’ military targets on Iran’s Kharg Island

US President Donald Trump has said the US military has heavily bombed targets on Iran’s Kharg Island, which handles almost all of the country’s crude exports and threatened to hit the island’s oil infrastructure.

“The United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island,” Trump said on social media.

“I have chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island. However, should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider.”

The United States and Israel have treaded carefully around the island, but Trump administration officials have been reported as saying that capturing Kharg was on the table as the war in the Middle East persists.

The island, located around 30 kilometres off the Iranian mainland, handles roughly 90% of Iran’s crude exports, according to a recent JP Morgan note.

State media in Iran said there was no damage to any oil infrastructure on the island following the US strikes.

The United States can provide “reliable” energy supplies to Asia-Pacific, US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said on Saturday, as the Middle East war cripples the region’s oil and gas flows.

Prices have surged since US-Israeli strikes on Iran killed its supreme leader and plunged the Middle East into war.

The conflict has virtually halted traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a key transit point for oil and gas, the vast majority of which is destined for Asia.

US President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” policy aims to ensure that “we have energy to allow for prosperity at home, and we have the ability to sell energy to our friends and allies,” Burgum told an event in Tokyo bringing together 17 countries from the region.

That ensures the region has a “reliable, affordable and secure” energy supply that “can’t be interrupted by a terrorist regime,” he said.

An Israeli strike hit an apartment building in a northern Beirut suburb that had also been targeted a day earlier, Lebanese media reported on Saturday.

Reporters on the scene saw rescue workers and damage, including a hole, in a building in the Nabaa-Burj Hammoud area, outside Iran-backed Hezbollah’s strongholds in the capital’s southern suburbs.

The same building had been struck on Friday without causing casualties.

Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported at least 15 explosions on Saturday with thick smoke rising over Kharg Island, earlier hit by US strikes.

It said the strikes targeted an air defence facility, a naval base, the airport control tower and an offshore oil company’s helicopter hangar, adding no oil infrastructure was damaged in the attack.

An air strike hit a house in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, early on Saturday, killing at least one person, according to a security official and another affiliated with the Iranian-backed armed groups in the country.

The strike in Baghdad’s Karrada district also wounded two people, they said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press.

In a statement, the Iraqi military condemned the strike as “a blatant violation of all humanitarian values and a disregard for international conventions.”

The Israeli army told people in an industrial zone in the west of Iran’s northern city of Tabriz to leave on Saturday ahead of military operations.

“Urgent warning to all people located in the industrial area west of Tabriz,” the Israeli military posted on X, adding it would “continue to operate in the area in the coming hours.”

Internet shutdowns in Iran since US-Israeli strikes late last month triggered a war in the Middle East meant that residents were unlikely to be able to access online evacuation warnings.

A missile struck a helipad inside the US Embassy in Baghdad, two security officials said.

The projectile landed within the embassy’s boundaries after the Green Zone, the heavily fortified district in central Baghdad that houses Iraqi government institutions and foreign embassies, added the security officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as they are not authorised to speak with the press.