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During the first two weeks of the latest war in the Middle East, as US and Israeli strikes rained down on military and energy facilities across Iran, one site went conspicuously untouched.

Despite its tiny size,Kharg Islandis an economic lifeline for Iran, handling roughly 90% of the country's crude exports – meaning any assault on it risks major escalation.

But on Friday the UShit military facilitieson the island. Sites related to the oil trade were not hit, according to US officials and Iranian state media. But Trump has threatened to strike those too, if Iran continues blocking ships from traversing the Strait of Hormuz.

Here's what to know about this crucial spigot in Iran's oil exports operation.

Why is the island so important?

Kharg Island is a coral outcrop around a third of the size of Manhattan just 25 kilometers (15 miles) off Iran's coast, in the Persian Gulf.

Almost every day, millions of barrels of crude oil gush from Iran's major fields – including Ahvaz, Marun and Gachsaran – through pipelines to the island, known among Iranians as the "Forbidden Island" due to tight military controls.

Its long jetties, jutting into waters deep enough to accommodate oil supertankers, make the island a critical site for oil distribution. It processes 90% of Iran's crude exports.

The island has long been key to Iran's economy. ACIA document from 1984said the facilities are "the most vital in Iran's oil system, and their continued operation is essential to Iran's economic well-being." Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapidrecently saidthat destroying the terminal would "cripple Iran's economy and topple the regime."

Iran supplies about 4.5% of global oil, pumping 3.3 million barrels of crude and 1.3 million barrels of condensate and other liquids daily, according to Reuters.

And the island has been loading tankers "non-stop since the war broke out," according to TankerTrackers.com, which uses satellite imagery, shore photography and data to track crude oil shipments.

In the weeks leading up to the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, exports from Kharg were ramped up to near-record levels, US investment bank JP Morgan said in a note reported by Reuters.

Storage capacity on Kharg is estimated at roughly 30 million barrels and, according to global trade analyst Kpler, about 18 million barrels of crude are currently stored there, Reuters reported.

What happened to Kharg?

Trump announced Friday that the US military conducted what he called "one of the most powerful bombing raids in the history of the Middle East," wiping out military assets on Kharg Island.

Video posted to Truth Social by Trump and geolocated by CNN showed US strikes on Kharg's airport facilities and runway.

A US military official told CNN the strikes were "large-scale" but avoided hitting the island's oil infrastructure. Targets included naval mine storage facilities, missile storage bunkers and other military infrastructure, the official added.

Iran said more than 15 explosions were reported on the island but no oil infrastructure was damaged, according to state-affiliated Fars news agency.

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Trump, however, threatened to attack the island's oil assets if Iran continues blocking ships from the Strait of Hormuz.

What impact would strikes have on the war and global oil prices?

Iran has said any attack on its oil and energy infrastructure will lead to retaliatory strikes on facilities in the region owned by US-friendly oil companies, Iranian state media reported, citing Tehran's military command headquarters.

The US strikes have raised the stakes in the war, a retired army official told CNN.

"It's gone simply from a 'take out the military, take out the regime' but now we're trying to take out the economic lifeblood of this country, potentially," former US Army Brig-Gen. Mark Kimmitt said.

Kimmitt said the US is holding the island "hostage" to ensure that Iran allows ships through the Strait of Hormuz, whose closure has already sent crude oil prices soaring.

If that oil infrastructure is targeted, Kimmitt said, "it is clear that Iran is going to attack the rest of the infrastructure in the Middle East."

"And at that point, the prices of oil will just go out of control," he added.

If Kharg's oil facilities were attacked, it could take Iran months, if not more than a year, to rebuild, Muyu Xu, senior crude oil analyst at Kpler told CNN, adding that as the main buyer of Iranian oil, China would likely see the biggest impact.

"They (Iran) are still facing western sanctions, they can't really secure enough funds and also technology and expertise, it would be difficult for them to rebuild," Xu added.

What could happen next?

Iran could escalate even further by making good on its threat to hit oil infrastructure around the region, analysts said. It has already struck oil storage tanks in US allies Oman and Bahrain, and has targeted oil tankers and cargo vessels in the Persian Gulf.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has alsothreatened to setthe region's oil and gas infrastructure "on fire" if Iranian energy sites are attacked.

The Kharg strikes came as the US announced it would send a rapid response marine unit of about 2,500 Marines and sailors to the Middle East. Former US Army Brig-Gen. Kimmitt broached the possibility of that force occupying Kharg Island.

It's not yet clear what the MEU will be used for or where exactly it will be deployed. But these units have traditionally been used for missions like large-scale evacuations and amphibious operations that require ship-to-shore movements, including raids and assaults.

Experts have also argued that attempting to capture or attack Kharg Island would require a significant number of ground troops — something the Trump administration has so far been reluctant to call in.

CNN's Kit Maher, Natasha Bertrand, Jeremy Diamond, Alayna Treene, Ross Adkin, and Isaac Yee contributed reporting.

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A Torah scroll removed from Temple Israel outside Detroit – where a driver rammed an explosives-laden truck and opened fire – was lifted up at Friday's Shabbat service across the street in a makeshift sanctuary for one of the nation's largest Reform houses of worship.

Rabbi Jennifer Kaluzny was in tears as she held one of the sacred scrolls removed from theWest Bloomfield Townshipsynagogue, where the grounds were sealed off with crime scene tape and heavy barricades one day after Thursday's attack.

"We're keeping one of them with us during services so everyone can see it," she told CNN. "Our traditions live… We're going to keep celebrating Shabbat. We may need security but we need to keep coming together and supporting each other."

On the first Jewish Sabbath since the attack, many in the Temple Israel community – about 3,500 families, or more than 12,000 members, according to its website – gathered in a hall at the sprawlingShenandoah Country Club, which was founded by Chaldean Iraqi immigrants escaping persecution.

"The place that so many of us call home, Temple Israel, became the site of something frightening and painful, an act of violence that was meant to shake us in our sense of safety and belonging," Cantor Neil Michaels said at the Friday night service.

"And yet, tonight, we gather… When the world feels uncertain, we come closer. When fears try to scatter us, we build community."

Temple Israel includes a nursery school and a religious school for children in pre-kindergarten to 12th grade, according to its website.

There were more than 100 young children at the school in a separate part of the building at the time of the attack, which was stopped when guards opened fire on the truck that drove through the front doors and down a hallway, authorities said. The attacker died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the FBI said Friday.

One guard was injured, and dozens of first responders were treated for smoke inhalation after the truck caught fire in what the FBI called a "targeted act of violence against the Jewish community." But all the children and teachers inside theheavily-guarded templeand school were safe.

The attack was amongfour acts of violencethat rattled America in recent weeks.

In a powerful sign of interfaith solidarity and cultural recognition from a community with a common history of displacement and resilience, members of the Chaldean country club across the street opened their doors to the Jewish congregation in a time of crisis, providing a safe haven and serving as a command and reunification center for families.

"When the children finally started coming over, I really understood why the Jews and the Chaldeans get along so well, because the first thing that they did was bring out food for the children," Temple Israel Rabbi Paul Yedwab said.

He added, "We all knew that this was the only place that this service could be tonight."

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Children sing as teachers shield them from attack

Rabbi Kaluzny was among those greeting anxious parents arriving at the country club after the attack.

"We just kept bringing parents literally into our arms," she said. "We had parents coming out of the woods, coming down the streets, running for their children, screaming some of them, others almost blank in affect."

The children were rushed out and locked down in a neighbor's garage, where during the ordeal they sang a version of "The wheels on the bus" about traveling to synagogue, lighting candles and celebrating the end of the week, according to Kaluzny.

"The challah on the table goes break, break, break, all through the town. The people on the bus say 'Shabbat Shalom,' all through the town," the song goes.

Rabbi Arianna Gordon described hunkering down in her office with members of the education team amid heavy smoke and bursts of gunfire. She also recalled holding toddlers on her lap in the neighbor's garage.

"I am so incredibly proud of our teachers," she said. "We have all undergone security training and not a single teacher froze in the face of this crisis. They did exactly what they had been trained to do. They kept every one of our students calm and safe in this moment of horrific danger."

Employees at the synagogue had taken an active shooter prevention training classjust weeks earlier, and the building had bollards placed around it in an attempt to slow a ramming attack.

Rabbi Gordon said teachers and other staffers arrived at the country club coughing and breathing heavily but quickly turned their attention to "screaming" and "catatonic" parents asking about their children. Some children separated M&M's into clusters of different colors on the floor of Shenandoah Country Club.

At the start of the Jewish Sabbath, a time of rest and rituals and the recitation of blessings over wine and bread, Rabbi Yedwab called the events of the previous day "a miracle."

"There were 106 children over there and, for a very long time, there were only four classrooms of children here," he said of the reunification center, his voice filled with emotion. "And we had no idea… The only thought that kept coming to my head is, how many little funerals are we going to have to do?"

The Temple Israel sanctuary is defined by its members, not the building damaged by smoke and fire across the street, the rabbi said. For now, there is no ark housing the Torah scrolls. "Those beautiful prayer books," Yedwab said, "they're all destroyed."

"What you have proven to us is that our sanctuary is not a building," he said. "It's you. It's us. We are Temple Israel. You are Temple Israel. And so we are going to rise."

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President Donald Trump is replacing Richard Grenell as head of the Kennedy Center, he announced on Friday.

Trump posted on Truth Social that Grenell would be replaced by Matt Floca, the arts center's current vice president of facilities operations.

The move comes as the arts and culture institution, which now bears Trump name on its façade, is expected to close for two years for renovations as the president seeks to remold it in his image.

Grenell's tenure as interim president of the Kennedy Center since February 2025 has been marked by tumult, plagued by high-profile performance cancellations, protests, declining ticket sales and financial strain as he sought to execute the president's vision for the arts center.

Despite earlier warmth between Trump and Grenell, a longtime loyalist who has served in various roles across the president's two terms in office, the president had become frustrated with a slew of negative headlines about his revamp of the arts institution, multiple sources told CNN.

One source familiar with the White House view said that the president liked Grenell, but felt that he had fumbled when it came to his leadership of the Kennedy Center, including on managing the publicity.

Another White House official insisted that Grenell wasn't being fired but that he was always intended to help during the Kennedy Center's transition period and then leave the role. And a separate source said Grenell did not want to stay through a planned, lengthy renovation of the facility. He plans to transition out of the role in the next few weeks and finish up his work fundraising.

While leading the Kennedy Center, Grenell often bucked the trends of the arts world, defying traditions and stretching norms in place for decades. Critics contended that led to strain and brought irreparable harm to the institution.

Some of those who work with Grenell described him as combative, confrontational and headstrong. A source close to the Kennedy Center lamented that Grenell had no experience or grounding in the arts world and came in "with a sledgehammer" and "campaign schticks" that are moving the institution in the wrong direction.

But others contended that he was exactly the person to carry out Trump's vision and that he brought a "no-nonsense mentality" to his work and brought in many new staff to the center.

In recent days, Trump has been "souring on him," a source close to the Kennedy Center said.

"Ric worked really hard to keep in Trump's good graces, but Trump got tired of turning on the news and hearing every day how bad the Kennedy Center was being run and (how) Trump is killing it," the source said.

CNN has approached Grenell for comment.

The president's 'Swiss army knife'

From the beginning, Grenell was an unlikely choice to lead an arts institution as his professional experience has largely been in foreign affairs. He served eight years in the State Department, including as spokesperson to the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration. There he waged a personal and public challenge to the institution he worked for after officials rejected his request to have his partner listed as his spouse in the United Nations Blue Book, a book that includes contact information for diplomats and other personnel.

After a stretch in California during the Obama years and then a return to politics and public affairs, he became close to Trump, and has an especially close relationship with first lady Melania Trump, sources say.

In Trump's first term, he served as US ambassador to Germany and special envoy for Serbia and Kosovo, and in 2020, the president chose him to be the acting director of national intelligence (DNI), making him the first openly gay acting Cabinet-level official. His three months there proved controversial, with the firings of top career officials, a re-structuring of several parts of ODNI, a deeply acrimonious relationship with overseers in Congress and the declassification of documents from the Obama administration that fueled the "Obamagate" conspiracy theory. But Trump remarked at the end of it of Grenell: "I think you'll go down as the all-time great 'acting' ever, at any position."

In 2024, Trump made him a presidential envoy for special missions, a role he still holds even while at the Kennedy Center.

Trump trusted Grenell "implicitly," said a source who has worked with Grenell in the past, and elevated him to interim president of the Kennedy Center in part due to his experience managing high-stakes diplomacy.

"The president's almost used him as a Swiss army knife," the person said. "When there's a problem that he can't quite figure out or he needs someone to figure out how to solve it creatively, he chooses Ric."

An imperfect fit

But veterans of the Kennedy Center and arts management were skeptical of his ability to lead the institution given his lack of arts expertise or experience. "One of my very first questions to him was asking him what his connection was to the performing arts, why he took on this role, what this meant to him and how did the Kennedy Center connect to who he was in his identity," a person close to the Kennedy Center who met with Grenell early in his tenure said, "one of the very first things that he said when I asked him that was he said, 'I love celebrities.'"

Grenell has highlighted his time singing in a choir as a boy, that his partner was once a Broadway actor, his belief in arts education and his love of niche programming to boost up his arts bona fides.

But multiple people familiar with the Kennedy Center's management said Grenell never showed much interest or took the time to understand what was required to run it, and turned down offers to educate or help him during his time there.

"He didn't want to know in any way what was possible and what was not possible – he just wanted to do what he wanted to do," a person closely connected to Grenell at the Kennedy Center said.

Months into his new job, Grenell proposed an unorthodox fundraising suggestion: to auction off conducting duties of the national anthem for the National Symphony Orchestra.

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The idea was simple – anyone who would donate $50,000 would get an opportunity to take the baton and step on stage, into the revered role of conducting the symphony for one song.

While the idea never came into fruition – and it's not clear how serious it was – just the suggestion set off dismay and embarrassment within the institution and among the musicians. Many felt the fundraising pitch threatened to cheapen the symphony, which has long been considered the crown jewel of the Kennedy Center.

But he could also articulate a clear, if divisive, agenda.

"You cannot have programming that is woke or not popular," Grenell said in a recent PBS interview, "We cannot have unpopular programming. It doesn't pay the bills."

He made it a mission to revamp programming as part of a holistic approach to the financials of the institution, starting with bringing in, in his words, more family-friendly programming. He brought in "Dog Man: The Musical," based on the popular kids' graphic novel series, at the recommendation of second lady Usha Vance.

"This is not just an arts, left institution but one that all voices are able to come here and be a part of it," Grenell said in an interview with Politico. "For a lot of time, conservatives didn't feel welcome here."

Grenell, as well as Trump, have attempted to beef up the pizzaz and glamour of the center.

In the past year, the center has been used for a high-profile FIFA World Cup event, the "Melania" documentary premiere and a Charlie Kirk memorial.

For the first Kennedy Center Honors, Grenell had wanted Dolly Parton to host the show, a source close to the Kennedy Center told CNN.

Parton declined the invitation, the source said, and Trump went on to host the show himself.

A temporary stop?

For all that, sources said Grenell did not spend much time at the Kennedy Center – often working from his home in California. When he is at the Kennedy Center, he is "secretive" and "pompous," critics said. He never had an all-staff meeting, and a source close to the Kennedy Center said that a year into his tenure, many staff still had not met him.

Some held the view that Grenell did not truly want the job and was just biding his time to wait for something better to come up within the Trump administration.

Grenell himself told people he was there "very temporarily" and did not shy away from telling people that he felt passed over for the job he had always really wanted – secretary of state, multiple sources told CNN.

"He kept saying that he agreed to take on the Kennedy Center role because he was assuming that he would that he would be taking on the State job quite quickly, so he was just a matter of time," a person close to the Kennedy Center said. "He felt like he was getting sloppy seconds of the Kennedy Center."

A next chapter

Grenell's departure will come amid tumult and continued challenges.

Multiple sources told CNN that attendance at the Kennedy Center had been so low that for months it had to "paper the house" – a theater term used to essentially fill seats – sometimes by offering tickets for free to federal workers to make the shows look fuller than what ticket sales could bring.

Critics of the administration have argued that much of this was caused by the Trump administration's moves to entrench the traditionally nonpartisan institution in politics, after Trump fired the board, replaced it with hand-picked loyalists, installed himself as the chairman, and changed the name to the Trump-Kennedy Center – a change being disputed in court.

"The challenge is finding artists who will work with us, not because they are a Republican or Democrat, but more because concern that if they have a concert at the Kennedy Center they will be labeled as supporting the administration that is not that friendly to the arts," a source close to the Kennedy Center said.

But Grenell did not do enough to address the problem, critics said. "They have an unwillingness to connect poor attendance numbers to the administration," the Kennedy Center source said of Grenell and his team.

A source close to Grenell said: "Ric is remarkably loyal to the people he works with and willing to throw his head through a wall to make it happen or to do something on their behalf. So if the president's got a mission – he's remarkably loyal to him he's going to do whatever it takes to make that happen."

The move to close for renovations was seen by many within the institution as an attempt to save face amid these challenges. "Every day was just another negative thing hitting the Kennedy Center, and I think that they felt like the closing of the Center is really the only way to stop the hemorrhaging," one of the sources said.

In his Truth Social post Friday, Trump wrote: "Ric Grenell has done an excellent job in helping to coordinate various elements of the Center during the transition period, and I want to thank him for the outstanding work he has done. THE TRUMP KENNEDY CENTER will be, at its completion, the finest facility of its kind anywhere in the World!"

This story and headline have been updated with additional details.

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