US Strikes Indian Tanker Off Oman, Killing Three Sailors; Trump Threatens to Seize Kharg Island
A US jet fired two missiles into the engine room of the tanker Jalveer off Oman on Thursday, killing three Indian sailors, in the third US strike on an Indian-crewed tanker this week. India’s shipping minister confirmed the deaths; Delhi is publicly furious. President Donald Trump separately threatened to seize Iran’s Kharg Island — the principal Iranian oil export terminal handling roughly 90% of Iranian crude exports — and said the United States will “hit Iran very hard tonight” and “soon take control” of Iranian oil and gas. Brent crude surged above $99 on the threat.
The Indian-sailor deaths are a major diplomatic incident: India is a key non-aligned power and a critical Iranian oil customer through pre-war sanctioned-purchase arrangements. Prime Minister Modi’s government is now in a politically impossible position between continued US strategic alignment and the domestic political damage of Indian-civilian deaths in Gulf-shipping operations. The Kharg Island seizure threat is the most serious US-side escalation framing since the early war: Kharg is the principal Iranian oil export terminal off the south coast, with infrastructure to load supertankers. Historically, threats to Kharg have triggered Iranian closure of Hormuz in earnest rather than the constrained closure Iran has maintained through the spring framework process. The US House War Powers Resolution adds a domestic-political constraint on Trump’s ability to follow through on the “very hard tonight” framing without congressional authorisation.