Iran’s IRGC says it attacked two US vessels, eight oil tankers

Tehran: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed attacking two US vessels and eight oil tankers in the Persian Gulf in retaliation to a US attack on five Iranian tankers, Iranian state media reported on Wednesday.

In a statement published by its official news outlet Sepah News, the IRGC said that its navy struck the vessels and inflicted heavy damage in retaliation to the “terrorist US Army’s aggression and malicious act of attacking five Iranian oil tankers in the Persian Gulf” on Tuesday night.

It stressed that its naval forces also targeted 10 “violating” ships that sought to cross a “prohibited and unsafe zone” in the Strait of Hormuz with the US Army’s support and provocation.

The IRGC underlined that its navy is exercising complete management and control over the Strait of Hormuz.

Also on Wednesday, the IRGC announced that its aerospace forces had attacked a US air base in Jordan in retaliation for “aggressive” US attacks against Iranian oil tankers.

Jordan’s military said that its air defence systems have destroyed 18 of 20 Iranian ballistic missiles. Two missiles fell in unpopulated areas, causing no casualties, it said.

The US Central Command said in a social media post on Wednesday that its forces had “destroyed five Iranian crude oil carriers” on Tuesday night in response to the IRGC’s targeting of “a US Navy warship with ballistic missiles twice over the past two days.”

“The US warship successfully evaded the attempted Iranian attacks and continued to patrol regional waters. No American personnel were harmed,” it added.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Iran on Tuesday that the United States would continue to strike Iranian oil tankers in retaliation for attempted attacks on US warships.

“Iran continues to try to hit US naval ships, and for every time they do that or try to do that, they’re going to lose tankers,” Rubio said during a visit to Colombia.

The IRGC issued an evacuation warning to the crews of oil tankers at piers in Kuwait and Bahrain following US attacks on Iranian oil tankers off the country’s southern coast on Tuesday night, according to Iranian media.

Earlier on Tuesday, the IRGC Navy said its forces had captured one of the US Army’s “most modern, smart” unmanned submarines at the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz.

Following the IRGC’s announcement, the US military said in a statement that one of its underwater drones “malfunctioned” over a day earlier during a survey of regional waters, without mentioning whether the device was seized by Iran.

IANS