Kharg Island

Kharg Island (, ), also spelled Khark Island and often referred to as the "Forbidden Island", is a continental island of Iran in the Persian Gulf. The island is off the coast of Iran and northwest of the Strait of Hormuz. Administered by the adjacent coastal Bushehr Province, Kharg Island provides a sea port for the export of up to 90% of Iran's oil products, as well as supplying storage for up to of oil.

The island lies close to several offshore oil fields, including the Faridun, Darius, Cyrus, and Ardašir fields. The city of Kharg and the Jazireh-ye Khark Lighthouse are located on the island, which has its own freshwater supply. Before it developed into a major oil terminal in the 1960s, Iranian writer Jalal Al-e-Ahmad famously called the island "The Orphan Pearl of the Persian Gulf.”

The island contains several important archaeological sites, including ruins of a Christian monastery dating from possibly as far back as the 7th century. There are also tombs, temples, and the Achaemenid inscription of cuneiform writing dating from between 550 and 330 BCE. It has been an important trading post for centuries, controlled by the Portuguese Empire from the 16th to the 17th century and by the Dutch colonial empire in the 18th century. The first depictions of the island appear on 16th-century Portuguese maps by Fernão Vaz Dourado, Lopo Homem and Diogo Homem.

It was first developed into an oil terminal in the 1960s under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in partnership with American oil company Amoco. Military installations on the island were bombed by the United States during the Iran war in March and April 2026.

Name

The island's name has changed through the years, with both local dialects and European maps influencing its spelling: it has been recorded as Kharg, Khark, Kharaj, and Kharej.

Geography and governance

thumb|Kharg Island, 1973

thumb|Kharg Island in 1993

Kharg Island is a coral outcrop in the Persian Gulf located around off the coast of Iran

History

thumb|Kharg oil terminal, 1967

Middle Ages

Kharg is mentioned in the Hudud al-'Alam as a good source for pearls around 982 CE. It was regarded as part of the district of Ardašir-ḵorra by Abu Esḥāq Eṣṭaḵri, and served as a key stopover point for trading ships sailing between India and the southern port of Basra. In 1218, geographer and bibliographer Šehāb-al-Din Abu ʿAbd-Allāh Yāqut visited the island. Alongside pearling and trade, Kharg's economy was based on fruit and date palm cultivation.

In 1645, Dutch sailors on a passing fleet named the island "Delft” after the seat of one of the Dutch East India Company offices. In 1665, Kharg was visited by French traveller Jean de Thévenot, who recorded trade at the time with Isfahan and Basra. The Dutch East India Company used it as a trading station. the terminal allowed loading of 100,000 dwt tankers and was inaugurated on 8 November 1960.

In 1964, a 27-mile 30-inch submarine loop was completed from Bandar Ganaveh and with additional pumping engines along the onshore portion, the capacity of the line was increased from 330,000 to 500,000bpd. In 1965, a 106-mile 42-inch line was completed from the Aghajari oil field to Ganaveh and two additional 27-mile 30-inch submarine loops were laid. At this point, Kharg was considered the largest oil shipment terminal in the world.

Upon visiting the island in 1960, Iranian writer Jalal Al-e-Ahmad called it "the orphan pearl of the Persian Gulf.” During the 1960s, Iran entered into negotiations with Saudi Arabia over the territorial extent of the two countries on the continental shelf in the gulf. They agreed on a modified equidistant line, which allowed Kharg to fall under Iranian jurisdiction. Despite ongoing sanctions since the revolution, Iran has continued to build facilities on the island, with the facilities put out of commission by heavy bombing by the Iraqi Air Force between 1982 and 1986. Repairs were very slow after the war, but when constructed the facilities were expanded and improved. In 1990, the Iranian Government agreed to pay Amoco $600m in compensation: $540 million for the takeover of four gulf drilling fields and the Kharg oil terminal, and $60 million for the petrochemical processing plant on the island. In 2015, the terminal facilities on the island were operated by the National Iranian Oil Company. Following the start of the 2026 Iran war on 28 February 2026, satellite imagery revealed that Iran had begun reducing oil storage there since early February, probably in anticipation of an attack. The facility had 18 million barrels (58% full), when nine of the oil tanks were estimated to be full by 7 March, compared to 27 in mid-January.

In March 2026, it was reported that Israel was considering bombing the island, while the US was favoring seizing it. Around 90 military targets were struck, while oil infrastructure on the island was left intact. On March 20, 2026, the US news website Axios reported that Trump was considering blockading or occupying the island in an effort to force Iran to allow ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

On April 7, 2026, the US military struck military targets on Kharg Island.

Archaeology

Achaemenid inscription

In November 2007, an Achaemenid-era (550–330 BCE) cuneiform inscription in Old Persian was discovered on Kharg Island. The inscription is carved on a coral rock in Old Persian semi-syllabic cuneiform signs. Despite the usually well-ordered regular system of Achaemenid inscriptions, this one is in an unusual order, written in five lines. It is estimated to be around 2,400 years old. The inscription has been variously translated to mean something like "[This] land was wilderness and without water [and] I brought happiness and welfare to it",

The inscription became a contentious matter in the Persian Gulf naming dispute. Some experts said it was further evidence confirming the Persian name for the Persian Gulf. This led to a "media frenzy" in surrounding Arab countries, where efforts were made to disprove its authenticity.

Other notable archaeological sites

thumb|An entrance to the Kharg tombs

The first archaeological evidence of human occupation on Kharg Island was reported by Captain A. W. Stiffe in 1898, with studies of his discoveries published by Friedrich Sarre and Ernst Herzfeld in 1910. They discovered two rock-cut chambered tombs, known as the Eastern and Southern Tombs, which are probably the earliest recorded remains. They feature arched entranceways to a main chamber with a vestibule, from which spawned around twenty smaller chambers. The southern tomb is deep and features a relief of a reclining man drinking, in the Seleucid and Parthian styles of Palmyra. A damaged relief suggested to feature Nike is on the face of a sphere-topped column. Stève has argued that the architecture of the tombs is more reminiscent of Nabataean architecture at Petra than anything Palmyrene.

Another 83 rock-cut tombs and 62 megalithic tombs have been studied. The rock-cut tombs fall into four categories: single-chambered tombs, shallow tombs of varying shapes, pit burials, and excavated multi-chambered complexes. The 62 tombs, excavated by Father Marie-Joseph Stève, date from the Abbasid Caliphate, and may have been a Jewish cemetery.

The island is served by Kharg Airport. The Jazireh-ye Khark Lighthouse services the island.

In the 2016 Iranian census, there were 8,193 people recorded in Kharg District, which is coextensive with the island.

In popular culture

The island appears with a SAM radar installation on it in the Sega Genesis flight simulator F-15 Strike Eagle II in the Persian Gulf mission map along with F-19 Stealth Fighter. The island is featured as a playable map in DICE's Battlefield 3 video game.

It also appears in Delta Force: Black Hawk Down – Team Sabre, with two of its missions being "Kharg Island Infiltration" and "Kharg Island Oil Terminal".