Iran touts military response as US maintains blockade and strikes tankers

Iran is presenting its response to a US naval blockade and attacks on Iranian oil tankers as proof that Tehran has moved beyond limited retaliation. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the United States must leave the region and stop what it called its malign conduct.

The confrontation escalated after the US Central Command released video showing three Iranian crude oil tankers being hit. CENTCOM said one tanker was struck near Kharg Island, Iran's main oil export hub, another near Jask and a third in the Gulf of Oman. Two were “permanently disabled”, while the third sank after extensive bombing, according to the US military.

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Aggressor US must know that it has no way but to leave the region and stop its malignance.

The IRGC later released its own video, showing projectiles carrying explosives crashing into several ships in the Strait of Hormuz. It said a US-built sea drone was hit while attempting to enter Iranian waters. The waterway carries one-fifth of the world's oil and gas in peacetime.

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live evidence of the enemy’s strategic defeat and proof

The Guard also said it had fired ballistic missiles toward a US aircraft carrier and another warship involved in the network imposing the blockade on Iran's southern ports. It claimed both vessels suffered damage and fled. CENTCOM said the attacks were “evaded”, and the supplied report did not provide independent evidence that the ships were hit.

IRGC statements described the US acknowledgment that missiles had been launched as evidence of Iran's offensive capability and the enemy's strategic defeat. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Tehran had inflicted “significant blows” on US bases across the region and warned that any further attacks on Iranian interests would bring “faster, heavier and more painful” strikes.

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significant blows

Iran's Foreign Ministry called the US attacks on Iranian ships illegal and a “war crime” that violated the United Nations Charter. The competing claims followed months of disruption around the Strait of Hormuz and the naval blockade imposed since mid-July, with US and Iranian officials offering sharply different accounts of its effects.

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faster, heavier and more painful