USS Spruance redirected the cargo vessel after it left the Strait of Hormuz transiting along the Iranian coastline.
A Navy destroyer turned back an Iran-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman earlier this week, one of 10 vessels intercepted since the U.S. began its blockade against Tehran, according to U.S. Central Command.
USS Spruance redirected the cargo vessel Tuesday after it left the Strait of Hormuz transiting along the Iranian coastline, CENTCOM said in a post to its official X account Wednesday.
The ship headed back to Iran, according to the post, which did not identify the ship involved. No vessels connected to Iran have penetrated the U.S. blockade east of the strait since it began Monday, CENTCOM said.
Ship watchers cast doubt on that claim Thursday, saying satellite images suggested that several tankers, including those connected to Iran, China and India, have made it past the U.S. barricade and were in Iran. In addition, other sanctions-compliant tankers were headed to Iraq with their location responders turned off, one ship watcher posted Thursday on X.
Meanwhile, as many as 20 ships — a combination of tankers, cargo ships and other vessels — had transited the strait in the first 24 or so hours following the U.S. blockade, The New York Times reported Wednesday, citing an unidentified U.S. official.
It remained unclear whether the commercial transits indicated that shipowners and captains were more confident in traveling the vital waterway as the U.S. works to wrest control away from Iran.
On Saturday, at least one U.S. destroyer transited the strait, a critical oil pipeline, as part of a broader effort to clear Iranian sea mines from the area.
The Navy also is rushing minesweepers to the Persian Gulf. At least one of them, the littoral combat ship USS Canberra, was in the region on Monday.
The U.S. blockade includes the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea east of the Strait of Hormuz, encompassing the entirety of the Iranian coast. It isn’t limited to ports and oil terminals, CENTCOM said in a notice to mariners earlier this week.
The action follows a breakdown in U.S.-Iran talks over the weekend aimed at ending hostilities in the Persian Gulf and getting Iran to forfeit its nuclear materials.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump turned up the pressure on Iran, sanctioning more than two dozen individuals, companies and ships associated with the county’s illicit oil transportation network, the Treasury Department said in a statement.
The sanctions target the Iranian and Russian petroleum sales organization controlled by Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, who has deep connections to the Iranian regime, the Treasury Department said.
Shamkhani is the son of senior Iranian security official Ali Shamkhani, who was killed Feb. 28 in the joint U.S.-Israel attack on Iran that started the war, Al Jazeera reported.
Spruance is part of the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, which has been operating in the Arabian Sea. At least 10 other destroyers are in the Middle East.
On Saturday, the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, flanked by two destroyers, was spotted on satellite images operating in the Gulf of Oman just 124 miles from the southern coast of Iran, the BBC reported Monday.
That’s the farthest north and west the carrier has operated in the gulf in recent weeks, a ship watcher said.
- Security