US President Donald Trump vowed fresh strikes on Iran on Thursday and promised to take the country’s key oil infrastructure, in what would be a major escalation in the war with the Islamic Republic.

“The United States will be hitting Iran… VERY HARD TONIGHT,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social network.

“At some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets, much like we have with Venezuela,” he added.

Trump gave no details of how the United States would seize Iran’s oil terminals, but any such operation would almost certainly require the involvement of US ground troops.

He talked about a possible seizure of Kharg Island earlier in the US-Israeli war in Iran, which began on February 28.

Kharg Island is at the heart of Iran’s oil export industry, a lynchpin of the country’s battered economy. It sits off Iran’s Gulf coast, hundreds of kilometres northwest of the narrow, strategic Strait of Hormuz.

The United States says it has taken control of Venezuela’s oil industry since toppling and seizing its president, Nicolas Maduro, in January.