IRGC Says Three More Tankers Ablaze In The Strait Of Hormuz

On Sunday Iran announced that three more international tankers are ablaze in the Strait of Hormuz after presumably hitting mines in an ‘illicit’ transit area as Tehran continues to try and clamp down on passage under its protocol.

“Since the early hours of this morning, three non-compliant tankers have exploded and caught fire while they were sailing in the illegal channel in the Strait of Hormuz,” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement.

The statement didn’t identifiy the tankers, and it was left open whether the assault involved drones or sea mines – but the past week had seen at least a half-dozen such mine attacks.

Saturday had also seen at least one tanker catch fire in the strait, with British maritime agency UKMTO saying the distressed tanker was off the coast of Khasab, Oman.

“Military authorities reported the tanker is on fire which has resulted in the evacuation of the crew,” the agency said. There may have been a second one struck Saturday “unknown projectile” - per UKMTO reporting.

In the wake of the midterm elections this week, after major Democratic victories across the House and Senate, there’s been relative silence on the Iran issue coming from the White House.

There’s been ample reporting on the potential for Trump to order a “short and intensive” new attack on Iran, but the question would still remain: what next?

Earlier last week, Presdient Trump had commented:

“We had a war with Iran. We won,” Trump told reporters Monday. “I don’t know if you even call it a war because we haven’t been doing any fighting for months.”

And The Wall Street Journal had also revealed: “But the U.S. has been engaged in smaller-scale strikes against Iran for several weeks, officials said, with explosions reported around Qeshm island on Monday on social media. Some of the officials described the assaults as defensive in nature to prevent Iran from having the freedom to attack commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Washington might be able to keep up the current status quo, despite these frequent Iranian attacks, but it’s also the case that the Pentagon’s ‘limited’ strikes against the southern Iranian coast could persist.

Tehran actually sees itself as having the upper-hand at this moment, at least when it comes to PR and ‘leverage’ in a political sense. Its leaders have been bragging that they essentially accomplished a ‘regime change’ of sorts in American Congress.