U.S. forces disabled a ship that was attempting to violate the naval blockade of Iran on Nov. 7, while U.S. Central Command has established a task force to help disrupt the regime’s overland weapons shipments.
A U.S. military aircraft fired precision munitions at the stern of the commercial vessel in the Gulf of Oman on Saturday after it allegedly ignored repeated warnings by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces to avoid violating the naval blockade against Iran.
CENTCOM shared unclassified black-and-white video footage of the operation, showing a strike and smoke billowing from the ship after U.S. forces told the crew to leave the parts of the vessel that were about to be targeted.
The vessel, the St. Kitts-flagged M/V Huda, was trying to depart regional waters after visiting an Iranian port.
U.S. forces said they have redirected 147 commercial vessels and disabled five merchant ships that refused to comply since the blockade resumed in July.
CENTCOM has previously destroyed another 10 Iranian commercial oil tankers believed to be part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ multibillion-dollar shadow network.
The incident with the commercial ship on Saturday came on the same day that CENTCOM launched Task Force Iron Gate, which is aimed at disrupting Iranian ground transit routes that could support illegal shipments.
Task Force Iron Gate will work with other U.S. government agencies to prevent the movement of advanced weapons systems, dual-use technologies, sanctioned materials, and illegal revenue streams across Iran’s land borders and the Caspian Sea, according to a CENTCOM statement.
The team consists of about 20 civilian and military personnel and is based in Tampa, Florida.
“Strengthening CENTCOM’s collaboration with U.S. interagency partners will further constrain Iran’s ability to finance terrorism, rebuild weapons factories, and replenish their military,” Adm. Brad Cooper said.
The latest effort to crack down on Iran’s military operations came one day after U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed that the U.S. military had carried out limited strikes targeting Iran’s “anti-aircraft device.”
“We do minor strikes,” Trump told reporters on Nov. 6.
“They built a little bit of an anti-aircraft device, and we knocked it out in about 15 minutes, maybe five.”
During a gaggle with the press in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump downplayed the conflict in Iran.
“We’ve made a lot of progress with Iran,” Trump added. “We’re taking out more oil now than we were before the war. It’s not a war. It can’t be a war when for five months, nobody was hurt, killed, or anything else. It’s not a war.”
Trump has acknowledged that the Iran war played a role in the Democrats taking back control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in the midterm elections, but he continued to stand by his decision to attack Iran.
“I did the right thing,” he told The Wall Street Journal on Nov. 4. “I would have done it again.”
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