Middle East & North Africa
Strait of Hormuz: Iran says four tankers are burning within 24 hours and blames the US – sources
Iranian armed forces say four tankers caught fire in less than a day in the Strait of Hormuz, two of them blamed on naval mines. The claims are Iran’s and have not been confirmed independently. UKMTO recorded further incidents.
Four tankers in flames in less than a day in the Strait of Hormuz are described in the announcements of Iran’s armed forces on Thursday, November 12. The last two are attributed to naval mines by the Navy of Iran’s regular army, while for the other two, described as supertankers, an announcement had been issued earlier by the Navy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). These are claims by the Iranian side that have not been confirmed by an independent source.
According to the announcement of the Iranian army’s Navy, shown in the afternoon on state television, the two ships entered a prohibited and “unsafe” zone in the eastern part of the Strait during the day, despite warnings and after switching off their radars. There, in the same version, they hit mines and caught fire. The Iranian Navy puts the main responsibility on US President Donald Trump and, secondarily, on the shipowners, who according to Tehran relied on his “misleading” statements.
In the morning of the same day the public relations office of the IRGC Navy had issued an announcement. The Guards claim that on Wednesday evening two “violating” tankers ignored repeated warnings from the Strait’s Traffic Control Centre, which operates under their Navy, about the southern route. On that route, which Tehran considers unapproved, the two ships were involved in an “incident”, a powerful explosion immobilised them and they were then engulfed in flames. According to the Guards, they carried more than 4 million barrels of oil in total.
The Guards’ announcement attributes the fate of the ships to their “misplaced trust” in the American military, which it likens to a “smuggler”. It closes with a warning that any vessel in the Persian Gulf or the Strait that switches off its navigation systems and cooperates with US forces to pass by the southern route “will have the same end”.
The sequence of Iranian announcements
Thursday’s announcements follow successive Iranian claims of ships hitting mines. On Wednesday, November 11, the IRGC Navy spoke of two more tankers that, according to Tehran, tried to leave the Strait under cover of American aircraft, hit mines and were abandoned in flames. On Tuesday, November 10, the Guards had announced two more burning tankers near the southern coast of the Strait, while the army’s Navy had reported a few days earlier another tanker in flames from a mine.
The British maritime security organisation UKMTO recorded an incident with a tanker in the Strait on Wednesday, with no information on the crew or damage, and on Thursday reported a new incident with a tanker hit by a projectile of unknown origin. The ships in the Iranian announcements have not been publicly identified.
Tehran has been drastically restricting passage through the Strait since the start of the war on February 28, and demands that ships follow the routes it approves. The United States imposes a naval blockade on Iranian ports and escorts tankers through the passage, while the American side maintains that the main routes have been cleared of mines.
