The US military said on Tuesday it destroyed multiple Iranian tankers after Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps twice tried to strike a US navy warship with ballistic missiles. US Central Command said the warship evaded both attacks and that no American personnel were injured.
American forces struck the vessels in the Gulf of Oman and near Iran's Kharg Island, and crews were told to abandon ship before the strikes. Centcom said the tankers were part of a multibillion-dollar shadow network that helps fund the IRGC and its regional proxies, turning a naval exchange into a direct blow against the system that keeps the pressure on.
Marco Rubio said the US would not let Iran's attacks go unanswered. Speaking to reporters in Colombia on Tuesday, he said Iran keeps trying to hit US naval ships and that each attempt would cost tankers, adding that readers would see that again that day. His warning landed as the latest round of fire followed a month of relative calm in August and pushed a long-running fight back into the Strait of Hormuz, where about one fifth of global oil and gas shipments usually pass.
The clash over the tankers did not stand alone. On the same day, the IRGC claimed its naval forces had seized an American underwater drone in the Strait of Hormuz in a complex intelligence and operational action at dawn. The US military said the unmanned submarine had malfunctioned more than a day earlier, and US Navy Capt Tim Hawkins said it was a defective older model that did not collect sensitive data or carry classified sonar or radar equipment.
That gap matters because it separates a battlefield claim from a technical failure. Iran described a seizure; the US described a damaged machine already out of action. Operations in area waters continue, and the question now is less about the drone than about how far the exchange in the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz will go after both sides have resumed fire.
