The United States military destroyed three Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps crude oil tankers in the Persian Gulf Saturday – as fighting intensifies between the two nations.
Footage shows large tankers blown up in flames, as a thick plume of black smoke rise off the sea.
A US military aircraft crew can be heard over radio warning an oil tanker near Kharg Island, before unleashing a barrage of missiles that lit the vessel in flames.
“I’m preparing to fire. …You have three minutes to clear the crew,” the US is heard in a video filmed aboard a nearby vessel, obtained by Iran International.
Crew members can be heard speaking in Persian and Urdu, and asking whether the ship’s captain was at his post — before realizing he was still asleep.
“This was your final warning,” the US crew says before firing at the tanker, which was first sanctioned by Washington in 2018. “Get into your lifeboats and abandon the ship immediately.”
Two of the struck ships were in the Gulf of Oman, and the third was anchored off Kharg Island — Iran’s key export hub through which 90% of its crude exports flowed before the war.
Earlier Saturday, Iran reported four missiles struck one of its oil tankers anchored six miles from the island, according to state media Tasnim.
“You have three minutes to clear the crew,” the US is heard warning in a video obtained by Iran International.
US Central Command said the strikes were in retaliation for the IRGC launching ballistic missiles at two US Navy warships patrolling regional waters.
“The three Iranian crude oil tankers are part of a multibillion-dollar shadow network that funds the IRGC and its regional proxies,” said CENTCOM.
“Let the message to the IRGC be clear: If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost —taking out three of yours,” added Adm. Brad Cooper, the CENTCOM commander.
“It’s simple: if Iran shoots at US ships, we will destroy (and sink) their oil tankers,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth wrote on X. “All they have to do is not shoot at US Navy.”
The strikes come amid an escalation in fighting over the past week that threaten to deepen the conflict — and the attacks near Kharg Island are especially significant given repeated threats to target the strategic oil hub.
President Trump posted on Truth Social last week that Kharg Island was being “blown to smithereens,” along with an AI-generated image showing oil storage tanks and refineries erupting in flames, and Iran has vowed a strong response if Tehran’s critical islanld infrastructure was attacked.
The first US strike on Kharg Island in March — which hit roughly 90 Iranian military targets while deliberately sparing the oil infrastructure itself — was a major escalation in the United States and Israel’s joint military operation against the Iranian regime.
