U.S. forces strike three Iranian oil tankers after missile fire at Navy warships
U.S. Central Command said Saturday that American forces struck three Iranian crude-oil tankers after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired ballistic missiles toward two U.S. Navy warships, raising the stakes in a maritime confrontation that has repeatedly veered between threats and direct attacks.
The strikes came only days after the two sides exchanged fire for the first time in more than a month, and they risk pushing Washington and Tehran into another cycle of retaliation. The Pentagon has made clear it intends to use economic pressure through military means, treating Iran’s oil exports as a legitimate target in a conflict that now extends beyond the Persian Gulf into the Gulf of Oman and potentially wider waters.
“A U.S. aircraft carrier and guided-missile destroyer successfully evaded multiple unprovoked Iranian attacks,” Central Command said in a statement. The Iranian missiles were launched toward the two ships earlier Saturday, according to the U.S. military.
In response, U.S. forces said they “permanently disabled” the IRGC-affiliated crude carriers M/T Downy off the coast of Kharg Island and M/T Stark 1 near Jask. A third vessel, the unladen crude tanker M/T Kylo, was “completely destroyed” outside the Persian Gulf after being struck repeatedly, CENTCOM said.
The command described the three ships as part of “a multibillion-dollar shadow network that funds the IRGC and its regional proxies.”
“Let the message to the IRGC be clear: If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost — taking out three of yours,” Adm. Brad Cooper, the CENTCOM commander, said.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote Saturday on X that “if Iran shoots at U.S. ships, we will destroy (and sink) their oil tankers.” He added that the U.S. could strike Iran’s tanker fleet in the Middle East or the Indo-Pacific region, saying Iran’s “oil tanker fleet is defenseless — Iran has no navy or air force.”
Iran’s foreign affairs ministry condemned the U.S. strikes as “illegal and aggressive” and called them an “overt threat to international peace and the security of commercial shipping,” according to a statement carried Saturday by Iranian media. It described the attacks as a “clear violation” of the UN Charter. Iranian officials also said they would respond strongly to any attack, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
Earlier Saturday, Iranian news agencies reported that a tanker near Kharg Island had been hit by four projectiles fired by U.S. forces. There were no casualties, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
Audio recordings of the encounter captured warnings from a U.S. military aircraft to the crew of the M/T Stark 1. “I am preparing to fire at your stern. You have 10 minutes to clear the crew from the stern of your ship. Over,” one transmission said. A later warning said: “This was your final warning … get into your lifeboats and abandon the ship immediately.”
The U.S. campaign is centered on cutting off the revenue Iran earns from oil exports, much of which flows through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway critical to global energy supplies. Kharg Island, a coral outcrop off Iran’s coast, has historically handled roughly 90% of Iran’s crude exports, and it has been a recurring target in the conflict.
Ship tracking data and satellite imagery indicate that nearly 20 Iranian tankers are anchored near Kharg, many fully laden but unable to exit the Gulf because of the U.S. naval blockade. More than 50 Iranian tankers are scattered across the wider Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, according to ship tracking services.
Despite the intensifying strikes, U.S. officials have stopped short of calling the situation a war. Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that there was “no active shooting,” and he declined to lay out a timetable for ending the conflict, suggesting it was up to Iran to bring to a close the war that began with joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes six months ago.
Saturday’s strikes underscored how narrow that distinction has become. The U.S. military is now openly treating Iranian oil shipping as a target set, while Tehran faces mounting pressure to retaliate or risk looking exposed in its own waters. The danger is that each side’s efforts to calibrate the confrontation may eventually outrun their ability to control it.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.