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Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps declared the Strait of Hormuz closed on Sunday and announced it had intercepted multiple commercial vessels it said had deviated from Tehran's approved shipping route, firing warning shots at one ship, as U.S. officials separately confirmed that an IRGC missile struck and damaged a commercial cargo vessel in the waterway.
The announcement deepens an already volatile standoff over the narrow passage, through which roughly a fifth of the world's daily oil supply flows under normal conditions.
The latest incidents came on the same day Washington had demanded that Tehran publicly affirm the strait is open and commit to halting attacks on commercial shipping.
The IRGC said its forces intervened against several ships it accused of moving outside corridors Tehran has designated as the only permissible transit routes.
In one case, Iranian forces fired warning shots at a vessel. The Guard did not immediately identify the ships or disclose their flags or cargoes.
The separate missile strike on a commercial cargo ship was described by U.S. officials as causing damage to the vessel. No casualties were reported in either incident, according to available information. Iranian state media did not immediately confirm or deny the missile attack.
The dispute over transit routes has been a persistent source of tension. Tehran has insisted that all vessels contact IRGC naval forces and follow a channel running close to the Iranian coastline, rejecting a corridor coordinated by Oman and the International Maritime Organization as unauthorized and, in its framing, dangerous.
The clashes arrive at a particularly delicate moment. The United States and Iran signed a preliminary memorandum of understanding in mid-June that committed Tehran to allowing commercial vessels to pass without charge for 60 days, a provision intended to restart the flow of shipping that had been devastated since the conflict began in February.
The language of that agreement, however, left the question of which routes were legitimate deliberately vague, and the IRGC has since moved aggressively to fill that ambiguity in its own favor.
Washington had set Sunday as a deadline for Iran to make a clear public declaration that the strait is open and that no attacks on vessels would take place, a demand that the day's events appeared to directly contradict.
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