CENTCOM disables three IRGC oil tankers after missiles miss two U.S. warships

U.S. Central Command said on 5 September that its forces struck three Iranian crude carriers after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired ballistic missiles at two U.S. Navy warships. An aircraft carrier and a guided-missile destroyer evaded the missiles. No American personnel were harmed. CENTCOM did not name the two U.S. ships.

The command said it permanently disabled the M/T Downy off Kharg Island and the M/T Stark 1 near Jask, on Iran's Gulf of Oman coast. In the Gulf of Oman it completely destroyed the unladen M/T Kylo, also known as the Noxen, after directing the crew to abandon ship and then hitting the hull in several places. Adm. Brad Cooper, the CENTCOM commander, put the policy in one sentence: if you shoot at two of our ships, we will take out three of yours.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on X that the rule is simple. If Iran shoots at U.S. ships, the United States will destroy and sink its oil tankers. All Tehran has to do, he said, is stop shooting at the Navy.

Audio confirmed by CNN recorded a U.S. aircraft warning the Stark 1 on an emergency channel. The pilot said he was preparing to fire at the stern and gave the crew ten minutes to clear that part of the ship. Iranian agencies said a tanker near Kharg was hit by four projectiles and reported no injuries. The same outlets said the IRGC had targeted three oil tankers on an unauthorized route in the Strait of Hormuz and three vessels it described as affiliated with the United States.

CENTCOM called the three ships part of a multibillion-dollar shadow network that funds the IRGC and its regional proxies. Kharg Island handles about 90 percent of Iran's crude exports. Politico noted that Trump has repeatedly threatened Kharg's energy plant and has not ordered a strike that would shut the terminal itself. Saturday's targets were ships, not the island.

U.S. officials told Air and Space Forces Magazine that Air Force and Navy aircraft, including fighters and drones, carried out the attack. The strikes sit inside a longer campaign. Fighting around the Strait of Hormuz has risen and fallen since a U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran earlier in 2026. A fragile ceasefire in June did not hold. A July U.S. strike hit more than 80 Iranian targets. Trump has called the Iran conflict small potatoes while defending his vice president for refusing to call it a war.

The new pattern is explicit. Forbes described it as a tanker-for-tanker rule: every Iranian attack on a ship in or near the strait is to be answered against Iranian crude carriers. Iran, CENTCOM said, has no way to defend those hulls once they are marked. That is an economic claim as much as a military one. Shadow-fleet cargoes are how Tehran converts oil into cash when official channels are closed. Removing three ships does not close Hormuz. It raises the insurance and routing cost of the next cargo.

The risk sits in the next exchange. If the IRGC answers against another U.S. or commercial hull, the same formula points to another three tankers. If it does not, the Saturday raid becomes a marker rather than a ladder. Kharg itself remains the larger target Trump has talked about and not used. Until that changes, the fight is being kept at sea, ship by ship, in waters that still carry most of the oil that leaves the Gulf.