[UPDATE] Iran says it hit an unmanned US vessel a day after the tanker strikes; Central Command calls the claim "a total lie"

Central Command named the three tankers it hit on Saturday, Sept. 5, and said no one was killed. No outside source has confirmed Iran's counter-claim.

The strikes. US forces hit three Iranian oil tankers on Saturday, Sept. 5, answering Iranian ballistic missiles fired at two US Navy warships. Central Command (the US military headquarters that runs operations in the Middle East) named the ships: the M/T Downy, hit by four missiles off Kharg Island; the M/T Stark 1, disabled near Jask; and the M/T Kylo, empty of cargo, struck in the Gulf of Oman and later sunk. The crews. Nobody was killed. Iran's own Tasnim News Agency said crews had been evacuated first, and CNN verified audio of a US aircraft warning one ship over an emergency channel to abandon it. Iran's claim. On Sunday, Sept. 6, Iran's Revolutionary Guard said its navy struck an unmanned American vessel trying to enter a restricted zone of the Strait of Hormuz. Treat that as a claim, not a fact: it comes from one side of the war, Central Command denies it, and no satellite imagery, ship-tracking service or third navy has backed it up or knocked it down. Iran's parliament speaker promised a "faster, more intense, and more painful response." Where it stands. The fighting resumed last week after roughly a month of relative calm. Energy Secretary Chris Wright says the Navy will keep escorting tankers through the strait until Iran backs down.

PREVIOUSLY

On Thursday, Sept. 3 US drones hit two Iranian tankers under a new "tanker for tanker" policy while the Navy escorted a convoy. On Sunday, Sept. 6 we ran the strikes themselves — three Iranian oil tankers destroyed or disabled after Iran fired ballistic missiles at a US carrier and a destroyer, with Adm. Brad Cooper saying the US would take out three Iranian ships for every two of its own fired on.

What the US escort operation has done to strait shipping:

Commercial vessels redirected by Central Command: 92
Vessels disabled: 3, and 2 more boarded

Central Command has not said how many ships it escorts or redirects in a normal month, so there is no baseline to measure those numbers against.

ContextThe war began Feb. 28 and is now past six months. The Strait of Hormuz is the narrow sea passage every Persian Gulf oil exporter has to use. Wright puts flow through it at 9 million barrels a day. PBS and NBC report that his figure is higher than what the tracking firm TankerTrackers.com measured over the 28 days before Sunday, Sept. 6 — but neither outlet published the firm's own number, so how wide the gap is cannot be said. (TS: Wright hedged his own figure the same day.) Wright allowed the US is at "two-thirds or more" of pre-war flows, counting oil moved by pipeline instead of by ship. Betting on the Polymarket prediction site puts the chance of strait traffic returning to normal by Sept. 30 at 2.4%, and by Dec. 31 at 25.5%. Those are prices set by a small pool of traders, not a forecast from anyone measuring the shipping lanes, and no trading volume was disclosed.