Iran, US trade tit-for-tat tanker attacks as war drags on

Eltaf Najafizada and Weilun Soon, Bloomberg News on Sep 6, 2026

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Iran said it targeted three oil tankers using an unauthorized route through the Strait of Hormuz, as well as a number of U.S.-linked ships, in retaliation for American attacks on Iranian tankers over the weekend.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy gave no further details about the incidents, nor did its Telegram post late Saturday specify whether the vessels were hit. The IRGC later said it also attacked a U.S. naval drone and an American military unmanned surface vessel attempting to enter the strait.

There was no immediate independent corroboration of further attacks around the waterway, a choke point for global energy shipments whose fate has become key to any U.S.-Iran peace agreement.

The IRGC announcement came after the U.S. military said it struck three Iranian crude tankers, destroying one, in response to the IRGC targeting two U.S. Navy warships with ballistic missiles.

The latest flurry of tit-for-tat attacks suggest little immediate prospect of an end to the war the U.S. and Israel launched on the Islamic Republic more than six months ago.

Observable traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which links the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, remained sparse, with only one commodity vessel crossing on Saturday, Kpler data show.

The speaker of Iran’s parliament and lead negotiator in previous ceasefire talks, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, on Sunday warned the era of “proportionate responses” was over.

The U.S. “must understand before it is too late that the rules of the game have changed,” he said, according to a Telegram post. “From now on, any aggression against Iran’s interests and security will receive a faster, heavier and more painful response.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has said he wants to “strangle” Iran’s economy, even as he’s struggled to bring the confrontation to a close. On Friday, he called the conflict, in which 18 U.S. service members have died, “small potatoes,” while Vice President JD Vance said he “wouldn’t call it a war” at all.

Polls show Americans are giving Trump poor marks for his handling of the situation, which has seen energy prices spike and put the president’s fellow Republicans in danger of losing control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

U.S. Central Command said Saturday that one of the tankers it struck, the Suezmax-sized Kylo, had sunk in the Gulf of Oman. It also said the Suezmaz Stark I had been disabled in the Gulf of Oman, as had the very large crude carrier Downy in the Persian Gulf near Kharg Island, Iran’s oil export hub.

Central Command said Kylo’s crew was told to abandon the vessel before the strike. Shipping data suggest Kylo wasn’t carrying crude oil when struck.

The IRGC Navy in its post repeated a warning to vessels not to use routes through the waterway that it doesn’t authorize.

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