A U.S. fighter jet fired a precision munition into the stern of a Panama-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman on Saturday, knocking out its propulsion after the crew ignored repeated warnings and tried to run the American naval blockade of Iran, U.S. Central Command said.
The command identified the vessel as the M/V Ocean Molica, also known as the Arika Sun, and said it had left an Iranian port and was trying to move through regional waters when it was stopped. The strike disabled the ship "without harming the crew," according to the command. Reuters, which described the ship as a bulk carrier, said it was not immediately able to reach the operator for comment.
On Sunday, the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency (UKMTO) said it had received a report of "an incident involving a tanker and military forces in the Gulf of Oman" and that authorities were investigating.
The command said its forces resumed the blockade against all ships entering or leaving Iranian ports on July 14. Over three months of enforcement, it said, four commercial vessels have been disabled and 135 ships turned around, while U.S. forces destroyed 10 tankers linked to what the command called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' "multibillion-dollar shadow network."
Attacks on tankers recently reached their highest level since the United States and Israel went to war with Iran in February, Reuters reported, and the number of vessels moving through the Strait of Hormuz has since dropped to the lowest in more than two months. Before the fighting began, about a fifth of the world's oil passed through the strait.
Tehran has been trying to enforce its own control over the waterway, demanding that vessels seek its permission and follow routes it approves. In a statement carried by official Iranian media, the Revolutionary Guard said its forces had struck a liquefied petroleum gas carrier that was trying to pass through what it called an "illegal route" south of the strait. UKMTO separately reported that an outbound tanker in the strait was hit on its port side by an unknown projectile that started a fire on board. The crew was reported safe, and the extent of the damage and any environmental impact were not yet known.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy questioned the strike on X. "What is this all for? Why are taxpayers paying billions to hit commercial ships?" he wrote. Murphy argued that the apparent aim was "to gain leverage in order to convince the Iranians to let us pay them billions to return everything to the way it all was before the war." "What a disaster," he concluded.
The command's statement ended with a warning to other ships. It told mariners to obey warnings from the forces enforcing the blockade, keep monitoring Notice to Mariners broadcasts and call U.S. naval forces on bridge-to-bridge channel 16 when sailing in the Gulf of Oman and the approaches to the Strait of Hormuz.