DUBAI (The Thursday Times) — Iranian state media said late on Thursday that Sirik, a county on the coast of the southern province of Hormozgan east of the Strait of Hormuz, had been hit by what it called an “enemy” strike, hours after Tehran said four tankers had been disabled in and around the waterway.
The state news agency, citing official sources, said the strike had happened minutes earlier and was military in nature. It did not say what had been hit or who had carried it out, and gave no details of damage or casualties.
Iranian officials commonly use the word “enemy” for the United States and Israel. There was no immediate comment from either country on the report.
Two agencies close to the Revolutionary Guards gave a less certain account. Both reported several explosions in Sirik and said their cause was unclear, while sources quoted by them suggested the blasts may have come from warning shots fired at vessels that Iran accuses of breaking its rules for the strait. The reports could not be independently verified.
Attacks at sea
The report came at the end of a day of attacks on shipping. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said two supertankers had been disabled by explosions in the strait late on Wednesday after using a route Tehran has declared off-limits, and Iran’s army later said two more tankers had hit mines east of the strait. Off the UAE, a tanker struck by a projectile near Ras Al Khaimah caught fire and its 22 crew were evacuated.
Earlier this week, sources said Iran had struck ship navigation aids on Oman’s Didamar island, and the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said the strait would never return to its pre-war status.
Talk of a wider war
On Thursday, US President Donald Trump wrote that Washington no longer needed a deal with Iran because it had Tehran’s money and “their Strait”. In Israel, caretaker Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave Gadi Eisenkot a security briefing on Iran as a row over a new strike broke into the open.
US Central Command described as “mere speculation” reports that it had told Israel to prepare for a resumption of the war with Iran, according to reports late on Thursday.
Sirik lies on the Gulf of Oman coast of Hormozgan, between the port town of Minab and Jask, facing the approaches to the strait through which much of the Gulf’s oil and gas has passed. Pakistan, which hosted talks between Washington and Tehran this year, relies on Gulf shipping for most of its fuel and liquefied natural gas.
