U.S. and Iran trade attacks on ships as fighting flares up again

A swimmer remains near the shore as a motorboat passes commercial vessels anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, on Friday.

Vahid Salemi/AP

Vahid Salemi/AP

The U.S. military on Saturday said it struck three Iranian oil tankers after Navy ships were targeted by missiles.

U.S. Central Command said it struck the vessels after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) launched two ballistic missiles at two Navy warships patrolling the sea. CENTCOM said a U.S. aircraft carrier and missile destroyer “successfully evaded multiple unprovoked Iranian attacks” and that no American personnel were injured.

“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,” CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper said in a statement posted on social media. “We will not hesitate to defend American forces, and if necessary, destroy Iran’s limited and exposed oil fleet.”

Strikes between the U.S. and Iran resumed last weekend, after a monthlong break from the fighting, when the U.S. hit several sites in Iran in response to a threat of Iran firing sea mines in the Strait of Hormuz.

An Iranian oil tanker near Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf, a key hub for the country’s oil-export system, was one of the three vessels the U.S. struck on Saturday. A tanker in the Gulf of Oman also was hit in “multiple critical locations” and its crew had to abandon ship and another tanker near Jask was also struck, CENTCOM said.

The three Iranian oil tankers were part of a “multibillion-dollar shadow network” that funds the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and its regional proxies, CENTCOM also said in the statement.

Shadow fleets are vessels that operate outside of the official shipping system. Iran uses shadow fleets as a way to move oil because it is under sanction. The U.S. has seized Iranian vessels operating under shadow networks, including two in April.

Iran’s foreign ministry on Saturday condemned the U.S. strikes, saying that they are “a clear violation of Paragraph 4 of Article 2 of the United Nations Charter, constitute a war crime, and represent an overt threat to international peace and the security of commercial shipping,” according to the country’s state media.

Lt. Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari also warned Iranian forces would target American military in the region “more severely than before” if the U.S. continues strikes against ships, according to Iran’s state media.

Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth on Saturday said in a social media post that if Iran shoots at U.S. ships, “we will destroy (and sink) their oil tankers.”

“All they have to do is not shoot at @USNavy,” Hegseth wrote.

NPR’s Carrie Khan contributed to this report.

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