By Shahzaib Saqib — SCN NEWS
DUBAI — Iran and the United States unleashed the biggest declared wave of attacks on shipping since their six-month war began, pushing their confrontation beyond naval vessels and military installations into commercial sea lanes carrying the world's energy supplies. Iran said on Wednesday it had attacked 10 ships near the Strait of Hormuz after U.S. forces destroyed five Iranian crude carriers, while maritime authorities reported merchant vessels struck across the northern Gulf and Gulf of Oman. At least one seafarer was reported killed and another missing, underscoring a shift from threatening shipping routes to inflicting casualties aboard the commercial vessels using them.
The American attacks came after what U.S. Central Command described as two Iranian ballistic-missile attempts against a U.S. Navy warship over the previous two days. CENTCOM said the warship evaded both attacks without American casualties before U.S. forces struck the Kaviz, Charminar, Horizon 1 and Riesco in the Gulf of Oman and the Derya near Kharg Island, directing crews to abandon the vessels before rendering them inoperable. Washington says the tankers formed part of a multibillion-dollar petroleum network financing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its regional proxies. The strikes followed the destruction of three other Iranian crude carriers on September 5, meaning CENTCOM says it has disabled eight Iranian tankers in four days.
Iran's response broadened the maritime confrontation. Iranian authorities said their forces attacked two U.S. ships and eight tankers in retaliation and separately said 10 ships attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz had been targeted. CENTCOM rejected Tehran's assertion that two American warships had been hit, saying the attempted attacks failed, while reports from across Gulf waters indicated that commercial vessels had nevertheless suffered damage. Because access to individual vessels and strike sites remains limited, the full Iranian tally could not immediately be independently verified.
The casualties demonstrate why the escalation matters beyond military claims from Washington and Tehran. The oil-products tanker Hercules Star was hit while anchored off Dubai, according to its charterer Peninsula, killing one seafarer and leaving another missing. In Iraqi territorial waters, the New Andros, carrying about 2 million barrels of fuel oil, caught fire after a drone strike, Iraqi port officials told Reuters; Iraq separately said there were no casualties or oil leakage. A maritime security source also reported damage to an LNG tanker at the Emirati port of Khor Fakkan, while the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency received reports of several merchant ships coming under disabling fire in the northern Gulf and Gulf of Oman.
Those incidents mark a potentially more consequential phase of the war because the commercial ships being exposed are not necessarily Iranian or American military assets. Tankers and gas carriers operate through complex international ownership, flagging, chartering, financing and multinational crewing arrangements, meaning a strike in Gulf waters can rapidly impose costs on companies and nationals with no direct role in the conflict. Iran has also threatened tankers in Kuwaiti and Bahraini ports, according to statements carried by state media, widening the geographic risk beyond Iranian waters and the immediate approaches to Hormuz.
The physical traffic data show how severely the threat environment is already affecting the world's most important energy chokepoint. Preliminary Kpler tracking showed just six commodity vessels passed through Hormuz on Tuesday with their AIS transponders operating, compared with nine the previous day and a 10-day average of roughly 12. Before the war began on February 28, about 125 large commercial vessels a day typically crossed the strait, which handled roughly 20% of global crude oil and liquefied-natural-gas supply. The comparison is not a complete measure because ships can switch off tracking transponders, but it illustrates how dramatically visible commercial movement has contracted.
Iran is now threatening to institutionalize that disruption. The Revolutionary Guards said Tehran would soon publish maps for a substantially enlarged restricted maritime zone extending toward waters off Chabahar near Pakistan and warned that future American strikes would produce a much larger Iranian response. According to Reuters, the Guards said that if two or three Iranian targets were attacked, Iran could respond against 20. Such declarations cannot establish what Iran is militarily capable of carrying out, but they indicate that Tehran increasingly views control and disruption of regional shipping as a central retaliatory instrument rather than merely leverage in negotiations.
Washington is simultaneously turning Iranian petroleum transportation into an explicit retaliatory target. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during a visit to Colombia that repeated Iranian attempts to hit U.S. naval vessels would cost Tehran additional tankers. That linkage matters: rather than striking another missile battery or naval installation after each attack, the United States is imposing a direct economic penalty on the fleet that moves Iranian crude. The result is an emerging maritime deterrence formula in which an Iranian missile attempt against a U.S. warship can produce the destruction of Iranian oil-export capacity, followed by Iranian retaliation against a broader pool of vessels.
Markets are already pricing the consequences. Brent crude moved above $100 a barrel for the first time since July, while AP reported U.S. gasoline at $4.22 a gallon and diesel at $5.94 as disruption around Hormuz tightened an already stressed global energy system. The problem for markets is therefore no longer only whether enough crude exists, but whether crews, tanker owners and insurers will continue accepting the risk required to transport it through waterways where merchant vessels are now being struck.
The maritime confrontation also comes as a second shipping corridor faces mounting pressure. Iran-aligned Houthis have attacked Saudi energy infrastructure and threatened Saudi-linked shipping through the Red Sea, while Saudi-backed forces have renewed strikes in Yemen. Hormuz and the Red Sea sit on opposite sides of the Arabian Peninsula and provide crucial routes for Middle Eastern energy exports; insecurity affecting both reduces the ability of producers and traders to compensate for disruption in one corridor by redirecting supply through another.
The strategic threshold crossed this week is therefore larger than the number of tankers hit. The United States is openly destroying Iranian oil carriers as retaliation for attacks on its warships, while Iran is retaliating across commercial shipping lanes where neutral merchant crews and third-country cargoes are exposed. Once shipowners conclude that nationality or cargo no longer reliably protects a vessel, a strait does not need to be formally closed to become commercially inaccessible. The biggest danger from the new tanker war may consequently be that military attacks achieve through risk, insurance and crew refusal what neither side has been able to impose completely through a declared blockade.