The US Navy is quietly assisting commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz as the US-Iran negotiations remain uncertain, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
Citing US military officials, the newspaper said a Greek supertanker carrying 2 million barrels of crude oil was guided by the US Navy as it crossed the strategic waterway off the Omani coast.
The ship was stuck in the Gulf since early March and is now headed to India to deliver its cargo.
A spokesman for the US Central Command confirmed that Washington was not resuming Project Freedom and that US forces are not currently escorting commercial vessels through.
The US Navy plans to assist about a dozen vessels, including supertankers and container ships, in transiting the waterway over the coming days, according to the report.
On Tuesday, Iran said the United States had violated a ceasefire by striking targets near the contested Strait of Hormuz, potentially complicating efforts to bring the war to a close. The US said its attacks were defensive in nature, targeting missile sites and boats attempting to lay mines.
Despite a ceasefire officially coming into effect since early April, the US military’s Central Command announced that it had launched “self-defense” strikes against Iran, with targets including missile launch sites and boats placing mines.
The New York Times quoted two American officials as saying that the US military strikes against targets in southern Iran on Monday came after intelligence analysts detected a series of potentially threatening Iranian military actions in the 24 hours leading up to the strikes.
American warplanes sank two of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) speedboats that were trying to place mines in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway that Iran has effectively blocked and that carried roughly a fifth of the world’s daily oil and gas supply before the war, the newspaper said.
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, also said that Iran launched one-way attack drones near some of the nearly two dozen US Navy warships in or around the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. The ships are enforcing a blockade against vessels trying to enter or leave Iranian ports.
American military analysts also detected activity at some of Iran’s surface-to-air missile sites near the Strait of Hormuz that threatened land- and carrier-based attack planes operating in the region as part of the naval blockade.
US officials and independent analysts also said on Tuesday that the Revolutionary Guards may have been testing to determine whether their forces have some new, additional operating room as the two sides try to solidify the potential agreement that US President Donald Trump has said could end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
CENTCOM said Tuesday that, as part of the American blockade on Iranian ports, it has redirected 108 commercial vessels since mid-April.
Meanwhile, the IRGC said Tuesday it reserves the right “to respond to any ceasefire violation by the aggressor US army.”
It added that it shot down a US MQ-9 drone and claimed that an RQ-4 drone and an F-35 fighter jet also entered Iranian airspace before retreating.
Other Pentagon officials dismissed Iranian media reports of the downing of a US MQ-9 drone.
