U.S. Central Command has said that Iranian naval vessels operating in the Gulf of Oman have been eliminated over the past two days, posting imagery showing weapons striking Iranian ships.
In a social media statement, CENTCOM wrote: “Two days ago, the Iranian regime had 11 ships in the Gulf of Oman, today they have ZERO.” The post was accompanied by video footage showing an impact on a vessel, though the command did not provide further operational detail on the nature of the strikes or the specific units involved.
CENTCOM added: “The Iranian regime has harassed and attacked international shipping in the Gulf of Oman for decades. Those days are over.”
The Gulf of Oman is a strategically significant waterway linking the Arabian Sea to the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint for global energy supplies. Iranian naval forces, including units of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, have maintained a regular presence in the region, often operating fast attack craft, patrol boats and support vessels.
The footage released by CENTCOM shows precision strikes against ships underway or manoeuvring at sea. However, the command has not confirmed the types of munitions used and there has been no immediate public response from Iranian authorities regarding the claim.
In its statement, CENTCOM gave the broader strategic context, saying: “Freedom of maritime navigation has underpinned American and global economic prosperity for more than 80 years. U.S. forces will continue to defend it.”
The message is longstanding U.S. policy on naval operations in the region as necessary to protect commercial shipping and maintain open sea lanes.
Independent verification of the current status of Iranian naval forces in the Gulf of Oman has not yet been made public.
CENTCOM has also previously stated that an Iranian drone carrier, identified as the Shahid Bagheri, was struck during the opening phase of operations. The vessel was a converted commercial ship adapted to support unmanned aerial systems at sea, providing Iran with a platform for launching and recovering drones beyond its immediate coastline.
According to U.S. statements issued earlier in the week, the ship was hit within hours of the launch of Operation Epic Fury. While full details of the engagement have not been released, American officials described the strike as targeting a platform used to project Iranian drone capability into regional waters.
The loss of the drone carrier would represent a notable setback for Iran’s efforts to expand its asymmetric capabilities. Such vessels are intended to extend surveillance and strike range using unmanned systems, offering flexibility without relying on traditional large-deck aircraft carriers.
Truly Epic Fury has been a great success then 🤦♂️
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Does anyone know what Americas war aims are? I thought it was regime change and getting rid of Irans nuclear program but apparently it’s sinking their “navy”.
I wonder if they sank the thousands of small bots the IRG is using to intercept tankers or stopped any of the ships carrying mines.
Or did they just go after the Facebook meme targets because the Secretary of war thought it would look good in a TIK Tok video.
American Aims are all based around Killing.
That’s pretty much It I think.
Why the fcuk are you asking dumb stupid questions like this? Can’t you find something to cut and paste?
Ahh, there you are ! 😂😂😂
I reckon Jim was missing you 😎
Trump is doing Benny’s bidding, and his corporate billionaire handlers. Why? Follow the money as always.
And its a wonderful distraction from the Epstein issues. Orange Man has done more to damage US relations in the past two months than Biden did in four years. From threatening Nato allies, to breaking International Law in abducting a head of state ( whatever the guy was or was not doing ) He is starving Cuba out.
Personally? I want the US out of the UK and Europe totally now, they are untrustworthy, despicable, and as history proves? More interested in their own agenda than anyone elses.
Might is not right in any playbook. Europe will, and can look after itself.
The aims are to make Dementia Donny and Pete Kegsbreath’s willy’s look big. Same as Venuzuela, “Regime change” that occured by removing the Dictator but leaving the entire structure in place and making vague noises about running the place so it looks good on Twitter, and hope everyone forgets about it by the time they start the next war.
Epstein isn’t getting much of a mention anymore. Trumps aims have been achieved.
Bill Clinton’s got more to worry about than trump….
Striking macho poses, declaring victory then putting up a 1500ft tall gold statue of yourself.
Minimum objectives I would say are:
Obliterating Iran’s missile capabilities and manufacturing
Obliterating Uranium enrichment/stockpiles
Hitting all IRGC and Basij bases
Regime change is probably not possible with just an air campaign.
The best we could hope for is that the surviving (new) leaders will be easier to deal with in future
I though Pantomime Pete looked down his trousers, and needed reassurance?
Mean while we can not shoot down a slow prop driven drone as its too expensive and we have limited missiles, what joke our armed forces are, no guns to shoot at drones just £ million misilles and not lot of them. Struggle strike back as gave most Storm Shadow missiles away. And we only have one cruse missile armed sub working and is in Oz, we are being made to look stupid.
We still have plenty of Storm Shadow which can be fired from Typhoon.
One of the issues with Akratori is its proximity to civilian areas. Cyprus itself has quite decent air defences which may well have been held so as let RAF lead not to repeat the three downed F15s.
But Phalanx and palletised 30mm should have been a thing there.
You can see after what happened in Kuwait yesterday with 3 F15’s being shot down why the RAF and any major airforce tends to be reluctant to have modern air defences on an airbase on a hir trigger looking for drones.
Just look at the USS Gettysburg incident in the Red Sea last year.
Fact is Britain has a type 45 destroyer available. It has half a dozen Sky Sabre batteries available and it has numerous Star streak systems available. These systems were not deployed to Cyprus for reasons unknown but it’s certainly was not because they didn’t exist and could not be used.
The drone that went to Cyprus was fired from Lebanon and for all we know was little more than a remote controlled airplane. These systems can do almost zero damage to an airbase. Active air defence is likely to be much more dangerous.
This is what I posted on NL 30mins ago.
The Cypriots actually do have decent AAW system but they were almost certainly on hold to give RAF primacy for reasons you outline.
That still doesn’t resolve why phalanx, as used in Afghanistan, or palletised 30mm under RAF control are not deployed.
Even a small drone can, by chance, hit a parked frame and write it off.
Absolute crap. You know nothing about RAF air defence systems or proceedures at British airbases whatsoever.
Why not elaborate then instead of just shouting angrily?
This is what DL does with Jim.
we have none of those two things, may be a few guns and an AWAC’s aircraft might be handy, but we have none. Sky Sabre is there but its costs a lot to shoot wooden prop drones down, when few 3/35 mm shells can do the job if we had them.
we do not have either, not any AWAC’s just Sky Sabre and a few harsh words. Might be lucky and hit one with GPMG thats about all we have its pathetic
And yet we shot down a bunch of drones in the gulf yesterday.
how much did that cost us, £4 million a missile, we can do that for how long before we run out of missile or we could have a gun based air defence like most of NATO, it cost too mush to use limited missiles. And an AWAC’s aircraft might of been a help if we had one?. We will run out of missles before Iran runs out of wooden drones.
I get the point, but one would assume they’re using ASRAAM rather than Meteor here (£200k vs £2mill). Outweighs the cost of a drone hitting and writing off a Typhoon, F-35 or God forbid service personnel.
i agree, but we can not keep this up, why are we in this sorry state? no Gun GBAD, when drones are such a threat?. Just talk, projects industry open days but nothing else. We can not fully defend a single RAF base let alone any thing else its pathetic. No one will rush to fix it and likely just hope no one noticed how crap things are.
Shinny expensive things but fogetting the basics, the UK has not had Gun GBAD since the 70’s doctorine choice how wise that was. We have had time to get some but like every thing we talk about, hint at, put on wish list then do nothing.
You are not wrong. Let’s cross everything for something like Terrahawk getting some UK orders.
i hope so but if we are real it will be a no, seems those in charge are just clues less and no rush to do any thing, sad, sad state of affairs, embrassing
BAEs Tridon Mk2 looks ideal. A 40mm GBAD on a 6×6.
Can look good but we have none, we just window shop and have many projects mean while its cross fingers and hope nothing lands where personnel are. Its a farce and its embarassing.
That’s a good reason to use something cheaper, not much of a reason to do nothing though. Especially considering this incident is now getting tied into the ongoing dispute over the RAF using Cyprus for the Israeli hostage rescue flights over Gaza.
Seems like the perfect place to put Dragonfire tbh.
Iran is in fact a failure of the UN to police existential dangers within its community. As I see it, although the UN did assist with sanctions against Iran for developing enriched Uranium to the point when the inspectors were being shut out of some facilities, that was as far as things went. There was no provision to take military action by the security council.
Its the same with massacres of populations within countries of which Iran is one.
How far should the nations allow these to go? Was Britain right to declare war on Germany in 1939? What would our International Lawyers say today?
Ah a wonderful article to wake up to
So much for the Ayatollahs mighty speedboat fleet 😄
Thing is that they might have been of use in a grey zone scenario – but things don’t stay very grey if you start attacking sovereign things!
So they were paper tigers IRL.
A threat that could be taken out at will by any western power.
Well yeah, no matter how many internet warriors on twitter or on this site come to their defence, they are done.
It will take years for their military to recover and it’s a pity we opted not to join in.
Starmer’s got to try and not offend his cousin fucker voter base I guess
Those are IRGC, this is the Iranian navy. The navy was always a minimal threat.
OT
Given the price rise in gas and certain Gulf States saying they are suspending production when they are scheduled to supply a lot of our future gas – North Sea exploitation U-turn anyone?
Starmer is good at it so why not?
That would necessitate Miliband developing the capacity for rational thought, or Starmer engaging in some leadership- so not likely.
They damn well should do a u-turn however Milibrain and the rest of the lefties would kick up a massive stink!
Lefties know that a FIFTY percent hike in gas prices would sink them and apparently, yesterday, market price of gas increased 50% because Gulf States are cutting off production; lefties are learning to like being in Parliament and being paid shed loads of money for basically complaining about their own PM and promoting the views of their extreme supporters and any other whingers; getting kicked out at the next election which isn’t that far away might be that cup of coffee they really should be smelling.
Totally agree with you ,trouble is we could have another three years with this government,and that really could spell absolute financial disaster!
Insurance companies are not insuring ships to go through the Straights of Hormuz. Qatar is one of the Nations that exports LPG. LPG has to be exported by ship. So currently ships won’t go through the straights, due to the threat and a lack of insurance. So even if Iran can’t take out the tankers/carriers, the mere threat is enough to stop shipping. Hence the rise in prices.
And I would understand that, but some Gulf States have stopped production in advance of that insurance issue.
This has opened a can of worms for rNATOm, who can not provide enough forces and given our (rNATO) policy of inclusion of all faiths means, providing forces to force home the attack and secure the Iranian coastline – would probably provoke unrest in our own Home countries.
Total can of worms.
I do hope so. We need to abandon Miliband zealotry and adopt a more pragmatic approach to energy policy.
Nowhere near anything left in the North sea to make difference in price. North sea production peaked 25 years ago.
The loss of the ‘drone carrier’ strikes me as an illustration of why you shouldn’t try and do naval aviation on the cheap.
What armchair experts are wrong. That can’t be true
For many years, 1979 in fact, the Iranians have been periodically shut down the straights and have generally been harassing shipping throughout.
They have active intelligence teams in the UK, with plans to abduct and murder Iranians in the UK, many UK citizens. They have also planned terrorist attacks in the UK.
On top of this, the Iranians pay a considerable amount of money to destabilise the UK and stoke up antisemitic activities through various nefarious means, social media etc, etc.
They finance and train terrorists worldwide, many British troops were injured and killed in Iraq by Iranian supplied IED’s, planted by Iranian trained terrorists.
They have been attacking the UK for years…
If the Iranian regime is eliminated and their Navy is sent to the bottom, I certinly won’t shed any tears.
Seconded.
Will be interesting to watch what the Sunnis do to the Shias who have now attacked them; in Pakistan, informed opinion is that the people who attacked the American Embassy were rent-a-mob, 27 killed for handful of dollars, oh well, never mind, carry on.
However, they also said that Muslims will rally around their Iranian brothers… and that support for the Theocracy had tripled after the attacks.
The US have quite possibly unleashed a war between religions/cultures; although on the side-lines, China and Russia have been hit in the gonads.
Dangerous times.
Dangerous indeed, it’s a massive slap for China and Russia…
Now, if Ukraine can get its hands on long range weaponry and dramatically reduce Russian refinery and storage facilities, it would rapidly bring the country to its knees…
Personally, I hope it happens; Ukrainians are similar to Russians, they do share some long-term history with each other. Therefore, correcting one of Hitler’s biggest mistakes and not enlisting the Ukrainians in his war against Russia might see the Russians brought down completely and some kind of hegemony restored to that area that would fundamentally reset the future with Ukraine buffering China.
Now, there is a game afoot!
Hitler did get some Ukrainians fighting for him. At the end of the war many were killed by the USSR while some came to the UK as refugees.
Hitler got some Brits to fight for him as well but, as a strategic (?) mistake, the failure to enrol the entire UKR nation is up there with his biggest mistakes.
Obliterated the Iranian Navy, really Don is that the same as how you obliterated their nuclear programme? They will have hundreds of RIBs waiting to attack tankers and any US warships stupid enough to get in range. Not much more to obliterate then Don? so all is well and we will win the war! The telly-tubbies talked more sense than Don’s Pentagon. I would imagine the Yanks were convinced the Iranians would have run out of missiles on Day 1. Presumably it came as a surprise to find they had a sort of air force too? So far aviation losses are about equal thanks to the Yanks inability to co-ordinate with local air defence. Amazing to see the Yanks extolling the success of destroying an F4 on the ground as a short while later 3 F15s flutter gently down to oblivion.
Too bad the comments above aren’t being broadcast on Fox news. If they were, it would ensure that the US came to its senses and dissolved the “special relationship” so that Perfidious Albion could fade into total irrelevance and the US could rid itself of its worst parasite.
Trump’s MAGA USA effectively joining the axis of evil, backing Putins war on UKR & wish to restore the Soviet empire, proposing invading & annexing Danish Greenland & Canada,generally behaving like a very insecure deranged psychopathic tyrant etc is doing far more to dissolve the special relationship & America as a reliable mainstay of NATO. He’s very effectively persuading allies to stop buying from American arms suppliers. Trump’s regime is a threat to the free world & US constitution.
🏆
Hint if you keep electing senile village idots don’t be surprised when you run out of friends
Why ? Is Fox News where all the fragile, insecure MAGA beta males get their news from?
I doubt Iranian regime change can occur until foriegn forces are prepared to invade & methodically clear out the Islamic revolutionary regime. That’ll be very costlt indeed. Hope I’m wrong, but Trump is ensuring minimal reality in his assesments from the dept of war as he’s clearing out professional people for yes men, the Stalin syndrome. Not that trump is known for careful preperation, research, intelligent hard work or tellingly, truth. Iran could end up ravaged & devestated but only under harsher oppresion, with a whole generation of people who were prepared to stand up to the regime butchered. Brutal regimes think nothing of eliminating dissenters; the very philosophy Trump admires.