Iran’s IRGC Says It Downed a U.S. Drone and Set Two Tankers Ablaze in Hormuz; Washington Disputes the Drone Claim

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed Tuesday that its forces shot down an American MQ-9 drone overnight and set two oil tankers ablaze after naval mines exploded in the Strait of Hormuz. A U.S. official dismissed the drone claim as untrue.

According to a statement from the IRGC published on its official outlet Sepah News, the two tankers were trying to transit what Iran calls an unauthorized route south of the strait, near the Omani coast, when mines laid by the IRGC Navy exploded. The statement named neither vessel nor gave a precise location. The IRGC described the downed drone as the 54th American MQ-9 it had destroyed and warned that oil companies would face heavier consequences if what it called continued U.S. actions in the region persisted.

Competing accounts

A U.S. official, speaking to American media outlets, dismissed the IRGC’s drone claim as untrue. Britain’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency said it had received an account of “an incident between an oil tanker and military forces” on Monday, about 121 nautical miles east of the Omani city of Duqm. The agency reported no damage or casualties and did not identify the vessel.

Separately, Iran’s state-affiliated Fars news agency reported that a U.S. airstrike hit a naval base in Konarak, in southeastern Iran, on Monday, wounding two military personnel and striking an air defense installation. Washington has not commented on that report.

Retaliation threats and the energy stakes

IRGC spokesperson Hossein Mojabi threatened on Monday to target undersea internet cables in the Gulf and the strait, and said Iran would unveil new weapons aimed at removing the U.S. military presence from the region. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said Tehran would not leave any blow unanswered, after reports that Washington had urged Iran to hold back in the event of a strike on Kuh Kalang.

The strait carries roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply, and crude prices were sitting near five-month highs above $110 a barrel on Tuesday.

The International Maritime Organization’s secretary-general, Arsenio Dominguez, said about 6,000 seafarers have been stranded in the strait since the war began and criticized shipowners for continuing to send crews into the area. U.S. media outlets have reported that the Pentagon is sending the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, about 10,000 personnel in all, to the region by the end of November; Washington has not confirmed the deployment.

Reporting based on coverage by WANA News Agency and the Daily Guardian Europe.