U.S. strikes five Iranian tankers after attempted attacks on Navy warship, CENTCOM says

American forces in the Middle East struck multiple Iranian tankers that U.S. officials said are linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in response to attempted attacks by the IRGC on at least one U.S. ship operating in the region, according to a U.S. official.

The Iranian attacks did not hit the ship or injure American personnel, according to the official.

The strikes Tuesday on the Iranian tankers come after the IRGC attempted to hit an American aircraft carrier and a destroyer over the weekend, resulting in a U.S. response in which the U.S. sank one tanker and permanently disabled two more.

Iran threatened to target oil tankers in Kuwait and Bahrain in retaliation for the U.S. strikes.

“Following the actions of the American military in targeting several Iranian oil tankers, we warn all oil tanker crews in the areas around the ports of Kuwait and Bahrain, which are hosting these forces and are complicit in their actions, to immediately evacuate their vessels, whether they are at anchor or docked as they will be targeted,” the IRGC Navy said in a statement posted by the semi-official Fars news agency.

The Strait of Hormuz, the key waterway through which some 20% of the world’s oil flowed before the war, has become the key battleground in the conflict as both the U.S. and Iran have attacked tankers.

The Trump administration on Tuesday also imposed sanctions on additional elements of Iran’s aviation industry, targeting more than two dozen commercial and private airlines as well as foreign cargo service providers in its new push to isolate Tehran from its remaining trading partners.

A U.S. blockade of Iranian ports has squeezed the country’s economy by limiting its oil exports, while the American military has been helping a limited number of ships transit on a route through the Strait of Hormuz off Oman. Tehran wants ships to follow a route that it chooses through the strait, which was considered an international waterway before the war.

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