American forces struck and destroyed five Iranian oil tankers on Tuesday, a response to two separate attempts over the prior two days by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to hit a U.S. Navy warship with ballistic missiles, U.S. Central Command said.
The command said the targeted ship successfully avoided both attacks and stayed on patrol, with no American service members injured in either incident. American forces then went after five vessels linked to the Guard — four located in the Gulf of Oman and one more near Kharg Island, Iran’s key oil-export hub — giving crews time to evacuate before the ships were disabled. CENTCOM said the tankers belonged to a wider fleet used to generate income for the Guard and the militant groups it backs regionally.
Tuesday’s action follows a similar strike just days earlier, when U.S. forces sank three Iranian tankers after the Guard’s initial unsuccessful missile attempt against a different American aircraft carrier and destroyer pairing. At the time, Central Command’s Adm. Brad Cooper signaled that any further Iranian attacks on U.S. ships would trigger a scaled-up response against Tehran’s tanker fleet.
In the aftermath, Iran’s naval forces warned tanker crews stationed near Kuwaiti and Bahraini ports to leave their ships, framing the warning as retaliation and accusing both Gulf states of enabling American military operations by hosting them.
The back-and-forth underscores how quickly the six-month conflict has intensified, with the Strait of Hormuz — a route that once carried close to a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil — now largely shut down and at the center of the fighting between Washington and Tehran.
