Lavan Island Attack: Ship Hit as Iran Claims Hormuz Mines

Attacks on merchant shipping have spread deep into the Persian Gulf, with an unidentified projectile striking a vessel about 40 nautical miles south of Iran’s Lavan Island, about 300 kilometres west of the Strait of Hormuz. The UK Maritime Trade Operations centre, run by the Royal Navy, said the ship was hit on its port side at about 18:00 UTC on October 30, starting a fire on board. The crew were reported safe, and the warning identified neither the vessel, its flag nor its type. In a separate report the centre stated that a crude oil tanker had been struck by an unknown projectile while leaving the strait itself. Nobody has claimed either strike, and both sit awkwardly beside the account of mine strikes that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been giving of the same waters.

The navy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed on October 30 that four oil tankers had caught fire and exploded on what it calls an unauthorised southern route near the Omani coast. It said the latest, carrying more than two million barrels of crude oil, had hit a naval mine and was left burning. An earlier statement claimed that two tankers had been halted after unspecified incidents, having switched off their navigation systems and ignored several radio warnings. None of these statements has named a ship, a flag or an owner, and no maritime authority has confirmed any of them, with the attacks it has confirmed, including the tanker set ablaze by limpet mines off Khasab on October 29, involving projectiles or charges fixed by boat rather than sea mines. It remains uncertain whether the ship hit south of Lavan is one of the four tankers Iran has counted.

U.S. Central Command rejected a further Revolutionary Guard claim to have destroyed an American unmanned surface vessel in the eastern part of the strait, stating on October 30: “All US military unmanned surface vessels in the Middle East are accounted for.” The command added that a squadron of sea drones was still patrolling the strait, while its commander Admiral Brad Cooper said in a video released the same day that U.S. forces had cleared the internationally recognised primary transit routes of Iranian sea mines. Cooper stated that the United States had helped Gulf states export more than 1.5 billion barrels of crude through the strait since the summer, a figure which highlights how heavily the southern corridor relies on American protection. The projectile strikes of October 30 nonetheless show that clearing the lanes of mines has not made them safe from other forms of attack.

Tehran has restricted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz since the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran began on February 28, insisting that vessels follow a designated route and coordinate their passage with its armed forces. The Guards have enforced that position before, with the UK Maritime Trade Operations centre reporting on October 5 that a tanker north of Khasab had been told by the Revolutionary Guards to turn back or be targeted, an instruction its master obeyed. Traffic has collapsed as a result, with transits falling to about three ships a day in the four weeks to October 25 against roughly 78 a day before the war.