The five-mile-long coral island - twice the size of London's Heathrow Airport - is in the north of the Persian Gulf, 16 miles (26km) from Iran's coast and roughly 300 miles (483km) north of the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway through which 20% of global oil flows, that Tehran has shut down.
President Trump said US forces "obliterated" military targets on Kharg Island, but significantly said he chose not to "wipe out" the island's oil infrastructure. He threatened that this could change if Iran interfered with the safe passage of ships through the strait.
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Tehran warned of a new level of retaliation if the oil infrastructure on Kharg was damaged, vowing on Saturday that Iranian forces would destroy the oil and gas infrastructure of companies cooperating with the US in the region if its sites were targeted, according to Iranian state media.
But why is the island so important?
Why was no oil infrastructure hit?
Kharg is the export terminal for 90% of Iran's oil shipments and has the capacity to load around seven million barrels a day.
The island can handle as many as 10 supertankers at the same time, as its waters are deep enough to enable the docking of tankers that are too large to approach mainland Iran's shallow coastal waters.
Before the war, the island handled most of Iran's roughly 1.7 million barrels of crude exports per day, with the majority of it going to China.
Iranian oil accounts for 11.6% of China's seaborne imports so far in 2026, according to tanker tracker Kpler. "Therefore, if [Mr Trump] was to take that out, he might risk the ire of China," Sky News' military analyst Sean Bell said.
Hitting Kharg's oil infrastructure would also likely lead to oil prices surging even further, after they hit a four-year high on Friday.
Oil exports continuing despite war
In the week before the war broke out, Kharg shipped a record of 3.79 million barrels per day, and operations on the island have continued despite the conflict.
About 13.7 million barrels of oil have been exported from the island since the US-Israeli strikes were launched on 28 February, at a rate of 1.1 million to 1.5 million barrels per day, according to maritime intelligence company TankerTrackers.com and Kpler data.
Multiple tankers were still loading there on Wednesday, according to satellite pictures from Tanker Trackers.
Kharg has storage tanks in the south, along with housing for thousands of workers. It has a storage capacity of roughly 30 million barrels, and held about 18 million barrels of crude as of early March, according to a JP Morgan report citing Kpler data.
Critical to funding of Iranian government
The island has long been seen as a key vulnerability that would provoke a severe response by Tehran if attacked.
Kharg is critical to funding Iran's government and military, and if Iran were to lose control of the island, it would be difficult for the country to function, according to Petras Katinas, an energy researcher at the Royal United Services Institute.
Mr Katinas said a takeover would give the US leverage over negotiations with Iran because the island is "the main node" of its economy.
While there has been speculation that the US could be tempted to seize Kharg Island, experts say that would almost certainly require troops on the ground, making it extremely risky.
One Iranian politician has reportedly already threatened US troops with capture if they attempt to seize its crucial oil hub.
JP Morgan's global commodity research team stressed the wider economic implications of a direct strike on the island, warning before the US struck military targets on Kharg that strikes would "immediately halt the bulk of Iran's crude exports, likely triggering severe retaliation in the Strait of Hormuz or against regional energy infrastructure".
"You take out Kharg infrastructure, then you take two million [barrels per day] out of the market for good - not until the Straits get fixed," added Dan Pickering, chief investment officer for Pickering Energy Partners.
Damage to the island
Iranian state media reported that no oil infrastructure was damaged in the US strikes, adding that air defences, a naval base, airport control tower, and a helicopter hangar were targeted.
The US "successfully struck" more than 90 military targets, including naval mine storage facilities and missile storage bunkers, the US Central Command said.
The 55 crude oil storage tanks, which can hold more than 34 million barrels, are "most likely unscathed", Tanker Trackers said.
"Although the island has some offshore oil production, the bulk of the oil actually derives from the mainland via multiple pipelines," the tracking service said.
"The island first began exporting oil during the summer of 1960 and was built to [accommodate] 7 million barrels per day in exports, to reflect the potential in oil production. Iran hit 6.6 [million barrels per day] in production back in 1976."
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The maritime intelligence company added that satellite imagery from Saturday showed two new tankers began loading 2.7 million barrels of crude oil there.
Activities on the island, including exports and imports, are "proceeding normally" after the strikes, the deputy governor of Bushehr, a port city close to Kharg, said, adding that no military personnel, oil company employees or island residents were killed.
Was the island targeted before?
Despite being viewed as a critical vulnerability, the island has rarely been directly targeted.
The last time was during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, but it did not stop crude oil exports from Kharg.
"When Saddam Hussein raided the island numerous times 40 years ago and destroyed a number of storage tanks, Kharg Island was still able to export over 1.5 million barrels per day," Tanker Trackers said in a post on X.
Officers were called to an address on Horseferry Road, Westminster, at roughly 7.30am on Saturday.
The baby girl, 18 days old, suffered serious injuries and was pronounced dead in hospital, the Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
A 43-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of murder at the scene and taken into police custody, where she remains.
Detective Chief Inspector Alison Foxwell, who is leading the Met's investigation, said the force "believes the incident occurred within a domestic context".
She said in a statement: "Our thoughts today are with the baby's family. The death of an infant is always an extremely tragic occurrence, and officers are making urgent enquiries around the circumstances."
Anybody with information is urged to come forward.
Running from Lambeth Bridge to Greycoat Place, Horseferry Road is a major thoroughfare in Westminster.
The street is home to government buildings, including the Department for Transport's offices, as well as Channel 4's headquarters and multiple residential addresses.
It follows calls from rural Labour MPs who have warned of constituents living in fuel poverty, unable to heat their homes, restock their supply, or afford the soaring price.
"It might be a small proportion for the country overall, but where there are big clusters of people using heating oil, this is a big issue," Labour MP Terry Jermy told Sky News.
The South West Norfolk MP said he has spent the week warning ministers: "I've got people literally turning off their heating because their tank has run empty.
"If we're not careful and if we don't act, this could be a public health issue. We've got elderly, vulnerable people literally not able to put their heating on, in some cases not able to cook their food. The government doesn't have a choice, we've got to act."
Beyond help for oil customers, Rachel Reeves is holding off on anything else for now.
Along with officials, she hopes time will ease the conflict in the Gulf and, with that, the impact on costs here. It's a defiant stance, and a gamble she hopes will pay off.
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Opposition parties continue to pile on the pressure over what comes after the current price cap on energy bills ends in June and fuel duty goes up in September. Politically for Labour, it's terrible timing.
Ministers felt their '£150 off energy bills' was a tangible example of efforts to ease the cost of living and put more money in people's pockets. From April, typical gas and electricity bills will see a cut as a result of changes announced by the chancellor in last November's budget.
By scrapping some green levies and shifting others onto general taxation, Labour says this will see the typical bill fall by about £150. Ofgem says this will be more like £117, as the cost of running and maintaining the network has increased.
But Reeves is nevertheless committed to fiscal discipline, determined not to resort to an eye-wateringly expensive package of universal support like we saw in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. A package she doesn't criticise, in an interview with The Times, but makes clear it's one we are still paying for.
In that same interview, she highlights that the government now has the benefit of better data. So any more financial support could be means-tested if it's needed in the future.
It's a big 'if', but a potentially very expensive one, even if the support is more targeted.
Labour has to spend the coming weeks weighing up its options.
Not just the financial cost, but the political too. For a government that made its priorities economic growth and higher living standards, it faces an unforgiving electorate if at the next election there's no sign of either - even if it's down to events beyond its control.
A member of the public discovered the body in a Coventry City Council bin with a green lid in Cash's Park off Daimler Road at around 5pm on Friday.
The victim, thought to be aged 40 to 50, has not yet been identified.
West Midlands Police believe he may have been hit by a vehicle before being moved to the park.
The force appealed for information to establish who the man is, and where and how he died.
"I urgently want to hear from anyone who believes they may have hit someone in their car yesterday, or who has noticed a change in behaviour from someone they know who drives, or who has noticed damage to a vehicle," Detective Chief Inspector Phil Poole said.
"It's vital that we trace that person as quickly as possible so that we can get their account of what happened.
"If anyone in the area has found that their wheelie bin with a green lid has been stolen, I also want to hear from them."
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Police are working with the council to figure out where the bin was moved from, and have asked anyone with dashcam or CCTV footage from the area to come forward.
Officers remain at the scene as the investigation continues.
The claims about the couple, who are estranged from the Royal Family, were made in extracts from a biography by author Tom Bower which were published in The Times.
According to Bower, who has written various biographies about the royals, Queen Camilla told a friend: "Meghan's brainwashed Harry."
The author also wrote that the Duke of Sussex's elder brother, Prince William, and his wife Kate were allegedly alarmed by Meghan's impact on him.
"Both evidently saw Meghan as a threat rather than an ally," Bower wrote in Betrayal: Power, Deceit and the Fight for the Future of the Royal Family, which will be released later this month.
There were also claims Harry was scared the Prince of Wales might effectively banish him after seeing the dramatic demise of their uncle, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who was stripped of all titles and removed from his home at Royal Lodge over his links to the late convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex tied the knot in May 2018 before they stepped down as senior working royals in 2020 and relocated to California.
They have two children together, six-year-old Archie and four-year-old Lilibet.
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In response to the claims, a spokesperson for Harry and Meghan said in a statement: "Mr Bower's commentary has long crossed the line from criticism into fixation.
"This is someone who has publicly stated, 'the monarchy in fact depends on actually obliterating the Sussexes from our state of life,' language that speaks for itself.
"He has made a career out of constructing ever more elaborate theories about people he does not know and has never met.
"Those interested in facts will look elsewhere; those seeking deranged conspiracy and melodrama know exactly where to find him."
Buckingham Palace declined to comment on behalf of the King and Queen. There was no immediate comment from representatives of the Prince and Princess of Wales.
Sky News has contacted the publisher, Bonnier Books, for comment.