Tanker War Continues: Iran Says 5 Ships Hit Naval Mines In Last 24 Hours

Iranian state media on Thursday is citing several more instances of tankers on fire in the Strait of Hormuz and regional waters.

Iran’s IRGC military says, “This afternoon, two more offending oil tankers collided with naval mines in the insecure area east of the Strait of Hormuz and caught fire,“ as cited in IRIB.

Earlier on Thursday, the IRGC announced two prior instances of tankers hitting mines, which happened in the overnight hours while they attempted ‘illegal’ passage south of the strait.

If accurate, this would bring the number of impacted tankers over the past 24 hours to five: 

In a statement published by state broadcaster IRIB, the navy said “ignoring maritime warnings and entering prohibited areas without coordination are reported to be among the reasons for the fires in these two oil tankers”.

The navy has now reported blazes on at least five tankers in total attempting to cross the waterway through “unauthorized routes” in the past 24 hours.

One of these was a smaller tugboat, per some recent regional reports. Some may have been hit earlier in the week but may still be drifting, or on fire. October had seen a record pace of these shipping attacks, with only a slight slowdown observed so far in November.

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 then?

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.

The war remains quite obviously deeply unpopular among the American public, and Trump has certainly felt this pressure, especially given the outcome of the election.

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.