Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported that a US attack in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday hit cargo vessels, not boats belonging to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), contradicting claims from US Central Command.
CENTCOM said that its forces destroyed six Iranian naval boats that attempted to interfere with commercial shipping, and President Trump later put the number of boats that were sunk at seven.
An Iranian military source told Tasnim that after an investigation, Iran found that no IRGC “combat vessels were hit” and that the US targeted two boats that were traveling from Khasab, a port city in Oman, to the coast of Iran, and said the attack killed five civilians.
“The investigation revealed that US forces had attacked and fired on two small cargo boats transporting goods belonging to civilians. The boats were traveling from Khasab, along the coast of Oman, towards Iranian shores. The attack resulted in the deaths of five civilian passengers,” the source said.
So far, the US hasn’t responded to the Iranian allegations, and during a press briefing on Tuesday morning, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth stuck to CENTCOM’s account, describing the vessels the US military targeted as “six attack boats” that he said were “dealt with before they were any real threat to the American military vessels they were approaching.”
The incident on Monday came after President Trump announced that the US would “guide” commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, a military escalation he dubbed “Project Freedom.”
