Seizing and holding Kharg could give Trump leverage over whatever regime emerges in Tehran without boots on the ground in Iranian cities, without a years-long occupation, and without a Delcy he won’t be able to find. You don't need to control the government if you control its main revenue source. Sanctions have tried and failed to choke off this cash flow for decades: the US tightens enforcement, then relaxes it to stabilize oil markets and lower prices, and Iran finds workarounds to adapt. Kharg would offer something sanctions never could: direct, physical control over the point where Iranian crude reaches the world. The US could let whatever government exists in Tehran run the country while it keeps the oil flowing and decides how the proceeds get spent. China, which buys roughly 80% of Iran’s crude exports, would prefer that to a protracted war that disrupts supply and pushes Brent above $100. So would the American public. All in all, a pretty attractive option for a president who desperately needs gas prices low ahead of the midterms and can’t afford to let anything derail his summit with Xi Jinping in April.

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The entire strategy, however, rests on the assumption that the Iranians would rather accept American control over Kharg than destroy the terminal themselves. The logic is that Iran needs that revenue to survive, so it won't blow up its own export capacity. That assumption may prove mistaken.

Iran's leadership has just watched its Supreme Leader assassinated and dozens of senior officials killed. The scope and intensity of its response – over 500 ballistic missiles and 1,000 drones in the first 48 hours, striking civilian targets across the Gulf in countries that weren't even belligerents, hitting a US embassy, killing American soldiers – has exceeded US expectations. This is a regime that sees compromising core principles – its missile deterrent, its right to enrich, resistance to American coercion – as more dangerous to its long-term survival than short-term devastation. The Islamic Republic has endured brutal sanctions, eight years of total war with Iraq, and decades of economic isolation. Further deprivation is seen as survivable. What is not is capitulation to Washington, which would delegitimize the entire revolutionary project.

If the choice is between letting America coerce it indefinitely or destroying the terminal and denying Trump his leverage, which do you think this regime would choose? The Iranians lose control over the revenue either way. Blowing up Kharg themselves before American boots hit the island would send oil to $120 and impose massive costs on the US, Gulf allies, and global markets, signaling that their pain tolerance is higher than Washington’s without sacrificing the regime’s ideological foundation. That's not necessarily an irrational choice from Tehran's perspective