The U.S. and Iran exchanged what U.S. Central Command called the most intense fire in months on Tuesday, triggered by a U.S. strike on an oil tanker that American officials said was attempting to breach the Navy’s blockade and load crude oil at Iran’s Kharg Island. The escalation unfolded in a rapid sequence of attacks that began when an American aircraft fired a Hellfire missile into the engine room of the Lexi, a vessel sanctioned by the Treasury Department in March for transporting millions of barrels of Iranian crude oil, according to Centcom.
Iran responded by launching one-way attack drones at civilian mariners attempting to transit the Persian Gulf, U.S. officials said. The U.S. shot down three of the drones and conducted what Centcom described as “self-defense strikes” on Iranian military ground control stations on Qeshm Island. The island sits at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz and gives Tehran operational control over ship movement through the critical waterway. Iran then fired ballistic missiles at U.S. bases in Kuwait and Bahrain. Centcom said two missiles fired toward Kuwait fell short or broke apart in the air, and three missiles launched at Bahrain were intercepted by U.S. and Bahraini air defenses.
Centcom said that no American personnel were harmed in the exchange and that the command successfully defeated all Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks. It denied Iranian claims that its forces struck the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, stating that “all Iranian attacks on American forces failed.”
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps accused the U.S. of igniting the string of attacks by striking the Lexi. The IRGC said its forces had retaliated by attacking a vessel belonging to the “American-Zionist enemy” and stated that the ballistic missile barrage was a direct response to U.S. strikes on a communications tower on Qeshm Island. The incident marked one of the most significant tests to the fragile ceasefire that took effect in April. While the two sides have repeatedly skirmished since the truce, they had generally refrained from a broad resumption of hostilities. Diplomatic efforts to resolve the underlying conflict have stalled in recent weeks.