US and Iranian forces fired at vessels in waters around ??Iran on Saturday, including three Iranian oil carriers struck by the Americans and three tankers that Iran said it targeted while on unauthorised routes in the Strait of Hormuz.\u00a0<\/p>\n
US Central Command said it struck the three Iranian vessels, including one off the coast of Kharg Island, near Iran’s oil export hub, \u200cafter Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched ballistic missiles at two \u200bUS Navy ships.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Let the message to the IRGC be \u200bclear: If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost – taking out three of yours,” \u200bsaid Admiral Brad Cooper, head of US Central Command, which oversees the US military in the Middle East.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The IRGC responded by threatening intensified strikes against US military vessels in the region, and said later it targeted the three tankers as well as three US-linked vessels in other areas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Do not be deceived by the ‘terrorist’ US military and refrain from any suspicious movement aimed at passing through unauthorized waterways,” the IRGC Navy said in \u200ba statement carried on Iranian state TV. “Otherwise, you will be targeted.”<\/p>\n
Tasnim, the semi-official Iranian news agency, had reported that four US missiles hit a tanker \u200cin the area of Kharg’s anchorage. Tasnim quoted local sources as saying there were no casualties and the tanker’s crew was \u200bbeing evacuated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No American personnel were harmed, Central Command said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The exchange of attacks followed an escalation in the past week that threatens to deepen a conflict that has continued since the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran in February, disrupting global energy supplies and drawing opposition from a majority of Americans before congressional \u200celections in November.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trump’s threats over kharg island\u00a0<\/p>\n
While US President \u200bDonald Trump’s administration seeks to pivot toward an economic clampdown on \u200cIran by widening sanctions, the president himself has kept open the possibility of military action.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On August 31, Trump issued a one-line social \u200cmedia ??post accompanied by an AI-generated video depicting Kharg Island being “blown to smithereens.” Iranian authorities have vowed a strong response if Kharg is attacked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Iran is \u200bthe third-largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and exported 90% of its crude via Kharg Island before the war. Flows have been disrupted since a US blockade of Iranian oil exports began \u200bin mid-April.<\/p>\n
Trump has spoken of an attack on Kharg before. He said on June 11 that he wanted to take over the island, but then said a US military operation there was off the table, days before Tehran and \u200cWashington signed an interim agreement aimed at ending the war on June 17.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A US attack on Kharg would further pressure Iran’s oil industry and \u200cits wider economy, which is already reeling from the US naval blockade.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The US imposed its blockade on Iranian ports after Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, an important waterway that carried one-fifth of the world’s oil supply before the war.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Brent crude futures closed at their highest level since July 24 on Friday, at $96.28 a barrel, as tensions in the Middle East drive global supply concerns.\u00a0\u00a0(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US and Iranian forces fired at vessels in waters around ??Iran on Saturday, including three Iranian oil carriers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[26],"tags":[405,818,196,13855,76514,4125,424,2601,1137,39,101,27742,146,736,1080],"class_list":["post-280893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-persian-gulf","tag-global-oil-supply","tag-iran-oil-exports","tag-iran-war","tag-iranian-oil","tag-iranian-oil-carriers","tag-iranian-revolutionary-guard","tag-irgc","tag-kharg-island","tag-middle-east-tensions","tag-persian-gulf","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-us-blockade-iran","tag-us-iran-tensions","tag-us-navy","tag-us-iran-conflict"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117226018054487313","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}