U.S. Central Command said overnight Tuesday that American forces had destroyed five Iranian crude oil tankers after Iran's Revolutionary Guard twice tried to strike a U.S. Navy warship with ballistic missiles over the past two days.
At the same time, Iran launched missiles at a U.S. base in al-Azraq, Jordan, with the Revolutionary Guard saying the attack was in response to the strikes on the tankers. Interceptions were seen in the skies over Israel. Watch footage of the U.S. strikes and the interceptions over the Jordan Valley:
According to CENTCOM, the U.S. warship managed to evade the Iranian attacks and continued patrolling waters in the region. No U.S. personnel were hurt. The statement effectively confirmed earlier reports that Iran had attempted to attack Navy vessels.
In response to the attempted attacks, CENTCOM said U.S. forces destroyed four Revolutionary Guard tankers in the Gulf of Oman — Kaviz, Charminar, Horizon 1 and Riesco — as well as the tanker Derya near Kharg Island, known as Iran's "oil island." CENTCOM said the crews were instructed to abandon the tankers before they were attacked and disabled.
U.S. Central Command said the tankers were part of a multibillion-dollar "shadow network" Iran uses to finance the Revolutionary Guard and its proxies across the region. CENTCOM added that Iran "has no means to protect these vessels."
Shortly after the U.S. announcement, Iran escalated its threats in the maritime arena. The Revolutionary Guard warned crews aboard oil tankers near ports in Kuwait and Bahrain to abandon their vessels immediately, saying they could become targets in retaliation for U.S. attacks on Iranian tankers.
Iran has also threatened to establish a "maritime exclusion zone" in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, warned that U.S. "economic warfare" would be met with maritime measures and said Tehran had fundamentally changed its posture toward U.S. warships and military bases in the region.
It was the second time in a matter of days that the United States attacked Iranian tankers following attempts to strike U.S. Navy vessels. On Saturday, CENTCOM destroyed three crude oil tankers after the Revolutionary Guard launched ballistic missiles at a U.S. aircraft carrier and a guided-missile destroyer. According to the U.S. military, the vessels also managed to evade those attacks without casualties.
In all, the United States has destroyed eight Iranian tankers in the two rounds of strikes.
Earlier, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing U.S. officials, that Iran had attacked U.S. Navy ships. None of the vessels was hit, according to the report, but Tehran's recent attempts to strike American maritime assets have raised concerns in Washington that it is using more advanced weapons — as well as the possibility that China or Russia may be helping Iran with information on the ships' locations.
Iran, meanwhile, claimed it had seized an unmanned U.S. military submarine. In a statement, the Revolutionary Guard said the vessel was captured at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz in a "complex intelligence and operational mission." Iran's Fars news agency later published images of the vessel it said had been seized.
The United States offered a different account of the incident. A U.S. official told Reuters that the vessel was an unmanned craft that malfunctioned while surveying waters near Iran. The official said it was an older model that did not carry classified sonar or radar equipment, and that the malfunction occurred more than a day before Iran announced it had seized the vessel.
Footage released by Iran of the submarines it claims to have captured
Iran also tried over the weekend to strike a U.S. aircraft carrier, prompting the United States to attack three oil tankers. The Journal cited Iranian officials who told Iranian media that the government was using new missiles with advanced capabilities to target U.S. warships.
U.S. officials who spoke with the newspaper said that even with those "new missiles," Iran would need to know the approximate locations of U.S. ships in order to target them, raising concerns that China and Russia could be helping Tehran track their positions.