US and Iran trade strikes near Strait of Hormuz, tanker attacked

The United Arab Emirates said one person was killed in a tanker strike near the Strait of Hormuz as U.S. and Iranian forces traded attacks around the chokepoint that handles about one-fifth of the world’s oil. The escalation raised the risk that maritime strikes could outrun diplomacy and turn a regional clash into a broader shipping crisis.

Washington and Tehran each claimed control of the strait as the fighting intensified. The U.S. used one-way attack sea drones in combat for the first time, hitting Iranian targets over the weekend. The strikes included an Iranian submarine and a ship facility attacked by three unmanned speedboats, a sign that the confrontation had moved deeper into the sea lane that carries crude out of the Persian Gulf.

Donald Trump notified Congress that hostilities against Iran resumed on July 7. His July 10 letter said U.S. forces “remain postured to take further action, as necessary and appropriate” against Iran, and the administration treated that notice as opening a new 60-day War Powers clock for military action without additional congressional approval. The move formalized a military campaign that now runs through Congress as well as the Gulf.

The confrontation fits a familiar pattern in the region. During the 1980s Iran-Iraq Tanker War, merchant shipping became a battlefield. Tensions returned in 2019, when May 12 sabotage attacks damaged four commercial vessels near Fujairah in the Gulf of Oman, June 13 attacks hit the Panama-flagged Kokuka Courageous and the Marshall Islands-flagged Front Altair, and the British Royal Navy seized the Iranian tanker Grace 1 on July 4 after accusing it of carrying oil to Syria.

The Strait of Hormuz remains one of the world’s most dangerous trade chokepoints because there is no easy substitute for the volume of oil that moves through it. Every new exchange of fire there carries immediate consequences for shipping routes, insurance costs and energy markets, while increasing the chance that more states and naval forces will be drawn into the conflict.