TEHRAN, Iran — Two oil tankers exploded after hitting naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard navy said Sunday, in a claim reported by Reuters from Iranian state media.
The navy published the claim on Sepah News, its official outlet, and said the tankers had taken a route Iran does not authorize. One of them, a supertanker, suffered a massive explosion and was burning, the statement said. Both ships had turned off their navigation and identification systems, and both stopped after the blasts.
No vessel was named in the statement. There was no word on flags, owners or crews, and nothing on whether anyone had been hurt. No independent account has confirmed it.
Britain’s maritime agency gave a separate account the same day. UK Maritime Trade Operations said a merchant ship’s master relayed a Mayday call at 15:09 UTC on Nov. 1 reporting that another vessel had been struck by an unknown projectile inside the strait. The agency advised ships to transit with caution and report suspicious activity. Whether that report involved either tanker in the Guard’s claim is not clear.
Iran tightened its grip on the strait on Feb. 28. Since then it has barred safe passage for vessels belonging to or affiliated with Israel and the United States, a step Tehran framed as retaliation for joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iranian territory. Iran has also attacked ships it says break its restrictions, as it seeks to assert control over the waterway and press the United States.
The strait, between Iran and Oman, links the Gulf to the Arabian Sea and carries a large share of the world’s oil shipments. U.S. Central Command has said most ships seeking to transit the Strait of Hormuz have done so without being hit.
The tanker claim landed while talks on the waterway were still running. Iranian and Qatari officials held a third straight day of talks aimed at a deal to end the war, and Iran has offered to reopen the strait within two days if the United States meets its conditions. Washington has not publicly accepted that plan. Oil prices slipped more than 1% early Monday, with Brent crude futures down $1.59, or 1.40%, to $111.84 a barrel by 0011 GMT.
A Guard spokesman, Hossein Mohebbi, spoke separately at a conference in Kerman province on Sunday. Iranian forces, he said, had set out a vast battlefield to inflict damage on the enemy and achieve complete deterrence.
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