TEHRAN — Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Tuesday that two oil tankers caught fire and were brought to a halt after hitting naval mines its navy had laid south of the Strait of Hormuz.
The tankers had tried to cross through a route the Guard calls illegal, in the southern part of the strait, according to a statement the Guard published on its official Sepah News website and reported by WANA.
“Two violating oil tankers were set ablaze and halted due to the explosion of mines planted by the brave sailors of the IRGC Navy at an illegal crossing point in the southern part of the Strait of Hormuz”
The Guard did not name the two tankers. Its navy repeated a warning that passage through the mined route is illegal, and it warned that oil companies would face more severe consequences if what it called continued U.S. actions in the region persisted, WANA reported.
Later on Tuesday, the Guard said in a statement carried by state TV that a third oil tanker had exploded and caught fire after striking a naval mine south of the strait. That tanker was carrying over 2 million barrels of crude oil and had deactivated all of its radar and navigation systems, the Guard said.
The Guard also said its air defense forces had identified and destroyed a U.S. MQ-9 drone while monitoring the airspace over the strait on Monday night. It described the aircraft as the 54th such drone it had downed. A U.S. official rejected the drone claim as false, the Brussels Reporter reported.
The UK Maritime Trade Operations agency reported a separate encounter between a military vessel and an oil tanker on Monday, about 121 nautical miles east of Duqm, Oman. UKMTO said there were no reported damages or injuries in that incident and did not identify the tanker.
Oil prices rose as the reports spread. Brent crude traded near a five-month high, and ship-tracking firm Kpler counted at least 18 vessels attacked in the past two weeks, the Seoul Economic Daily reported.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said Tuesday that Iran will not let any strike against it go unanswered and will respond with equal or greater force. “We have demonstrated in practice that we will not leave any attack unanswered,” he said.
Before the war, the strait carried roughly a fifth of the world’s oil. The fighting began in late February with U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. Arsenio Dominguez, who heads the International Maritime Organization, has put the number of seafarers stranded in the strait since then at about 6,000.
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