View noticesUS destroys five Iranian oil tankers as Tehran strikes back at Jordan
The United States military says it destroyed five Iranian oil tankers on Tuesday in response to fresh attacks on its warships, while Tehran struck back at American-linked targets in Jordan.
The latest exchange of strikes is likely to push the two sides closer to open hostilities in a war now more than six months old.
The account below draws on statements from US Central Command (Centcom) and Iranian state media, neither of which has been independently verified.
Following the American strikes, Iran launched missiles toward US targets in Jordan, according to Iranian state media. Jordan's military said its air defence systems intercepted 18 ballistic missiles fired toward its territory, with two others falling in unpopulated areas, and reported no casualties.
Jordan hosts American forces and has repeatedly been targeted by Iranian strikes as a result. Centcom said it had no information to offer on the Jordan strikes, meaning the extent and target of any Iranian action there remains unconfirmed by the US side.
The latest action forms part of a dual economic and military strategy pursued by President Donald Trump as he seeks to bring the war to an end. On Tuesday, the Trump administration also imposed further sanctions on Iran's aviation sector, targeting more than two dozen commercial and private airlines along with foreign cargo service providers, in a renewed push to isolate Tehran from its remaining trading partners.
Both Washington and Tehran are seeking to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world's oil passed before the war began.
Rising energy prices are creating political difficulties for Trump and the Republican Party ahead of November's midterm elections; Brent crude, the international benchmark, briefly climbed as high as $99.46 a barrel on Tuesday.
US forces had already destroyed three Iranian oil tankers on Saturday, after Iran's Revolutionary Guards attempted to strike a US aircraft carrier and destroyer with ballistic missiles, according to the US account of that incident.
The US had warned it would, if necessary, destroy Iran's limited and exposed oil fleet. Iran has since said it plans to declare a new “exclusion zone” near the Strait for vessels intending to transit the waterway – a claim of intent that has not yet translated into a confirmed, implemented measure.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio said Washington would not allow Iran's attacks to go unanswered, telling reporters in Colombia that Iran would continue to lose tankers for every attempt it made to hit US naval ships.
Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran expert at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, offered his own assessment that the continuing exchange of strikes risked further retaliation and damage to the global economy.
Writing on social media, he said there was no military solution to the standoff over the Strait of Hormuz, and that every attempt to impose one only brought Washington and Tehran closer to an escalation that could become increasingly difficult to control. This is Citrinowicz's analysis rather than a verified fact.
According to Centcom's own account, its forces struck the tankers on Tuesday after the Revolutionary Guards twice targeted a US Navy warship with ballistic missiles over the previous two days. Centcom said the warship successfully evaded the attempted attacks and continued patrolling regional waters, with no American personnel harmed – a version of events that rests solely on the US military's own reporting.
Centcom named the tankers destroyed on Tuesday as the Kivik, Charminar, Horizon 1 and Riesco, all struck in the Gulf of Oman, along with the vessel Derya near Kharg Island in the Strait itself. It said crews aboard all five vessels were ordered to abandon ship ahead of the strikes.
Iranian state television gave its own, separate account of the US strikes, reporting that American forces had hit Iranian oil tankers near the southern port of Jask and near Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf, and that crews had been evacuated.
A state TV reporter in Jask said a tanker had been struck near the coast of Yekbeni, with a second reported hit near Jask shortly afterwards. A further tanker was reported struck in the Kharg Island anchorage area. These details come from Iranian state broadcasting and have not been corroborated by an independent source.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard Navy earlier warned crews of oil tankers near ports in Kuwait and Bahrain to leave their vessels immediately, saying they could be targeted in retaliation for the US strikes on Iranian tankers. It accused the two Gulf states of hosting US forces and assisting in the attacks – an allegation Kuwait and Bahrain have not been reported as responding to in this account.
A US blockade of Iranian ports has squeezed the country's economy by limiting its oil exports, while the American military has been assisting a limited number of vessels transiting a route through the Strait of Hormuz off Oman.
Tehran, for its part, wants ships to follow a route of its own choosing through the strait, which was regarded as an international waterway before the war began.