A U.S. Navy destroyer in the Arabian Sea repeatedly warned an Iranian-flagged cargo ship to stop over a six-hour period on Sunday before firing on the ship’s engine room and disabling it, U.S. Central Command said in a statement on social media. Helicopter-borne Marines then swooped down and seized the vessel.
It was the first time a vessel was reported to have tried to evade the U.S.-imposed blockade on any ship entering or exiting Iranian ports since it took effect last week. Previously, 25 other ships intercepted by a Navy flotilla operating outside the Strait of Hormuz had turned around when hailed by Navy crew members, Central Command said.
Sunday was different.
When the captain of the Iranian vessel, the Touska, ignored multiple radioed American warnings to halt or else, the guided-missile destroyer Spruance, one of more than a dozen Navy warships enforcing the U.S. blockade, ordered the Touska’s crew to evacuate its engine room. The Spruance then fired several rounds from its MK 45 gun into the ship’s propulsion system as it steamed toward the port of Bandar Abbas in Iran, Central Command said.
A boarding party from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit was conducting a search of the vessel and its cargo on Sunday, all of which is now in American custody, a U.S. military official said.
“American forces acted in a deliberate, professional, and proportional manner to ensure compliance,” Central Command’s statement said.
American officials will determine what to do with the disabled vessel once the search is completed, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. One option would be to tow the stricken ship to Oman, independent specialists said on Sunday.
The Touska was one of “several vessels of interest” that U.S. intelligence analysts have been monitoring in recent days, both inside and outside the blockade boundary the U.S. military official said.
“We have eyes on every single one of them,” Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of Central Command, told reporters on Friday.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday that U.S. military commanders elsewhere in the world, and especially in the Indo-Pacific region, would “actively pursue any Iranian-flagged vessel or any vessel attempting to provide material support to Iran.”
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.
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