US military says it struck three Iranian tankers after American warships came under missile attack

The US military said Saturday it struck three Iranian oil tankers after US navy warships came under missile attack, further escalating tensions in the region and warning it would “if necessary, destroy Iran’s limited and exposed oil fleet”.

According to the military, a US aircraft carrier and destroyer avoided “multiple unprovoked Iranian attacks” while patrolling the region. No US personnel were injured.

Two of the Iranian oil carriers were “permanently disabled”, the Pentagon said, while a third tanker, which was unladen, was destroyed.

The US said the vessels were part of a shadow network that helped finance Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards and armed proxy groups operating across the region.

“We will not hesitate to defend American forces, and if necessary, destroy Iran’s limited and exposed oil fleet,” the head of US Central Command, Adm Brad Cooper, said in the statement.

The announcement followed an earlier report from Iran that the US had attacked an Iranian tanker near Kharg Island in the Gulf. Tasnim, a semiofficial news outlet affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, reported the strike happened on Saturday morning. It said the tanker’s crew survived and was being evacuated.

The US said one tanker was struck off Kharg Island, while another was hit near Jask. The unladen tanker was struck in the Gulf of Oman. The US statement also shared what it described as video footage of the strikes.

The latest attacks came nearly a week after the US and Iran resumed strikes after about a month of relative calm in the on-again, off-again war that began with US and Israeli attacks in February. Attempts at negotiations have collapsed.

One of the strikes hit a wedding in southern Iran on Tuesday, killing four people, including a child, and injuring dozens, according to Iranian officials.

The US vice-president, JD Vance, said “sometimes things happen” when asked on Thursday whether an US strike was responsible for killing people at the wedding celebration.

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The renewed strikes have also brought fresh scrutiny to a 28 February US attack in Minab that struck a school compound and killed at least 156 people, most of them schoolchildren.

A preliminary US military inquiry reportedly found that the attack resulted from a targeting error after outdated coordinates identified the school as part of a nearby Revolutionary Guards naval base. The Pentagon said at the time that it was investigating. A full report has not been made public.

Associated Press contributed reporting