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An Iranian tanker from the country's shadow fleet caught fire after being struck by its own naval forces in the Strait of Hormuz. Omani authorities reported that 20 crew members, including 15 Indians, were rescued as the vessel continued to sink. The tanker, part of a network used to bypass international sanctions, was reportedly targeted for "illegally passing" through the strategic waterway. After being hit, fires erupted on board, forcing a rapid evacuation by nearby rescue teams. Shadow fleet strike sparks chaos The vessel, managed by Red Sea Ship Management LLC, had been sanctioned by the US Treasury in December...

Shipping and military expert John Konrad spent all day in D.C. on Tuesday talking to his military sources and concluded that "the Navy appears to be in no rush to reopen the strait," even while Iran dictates whose oil tankers are allowed to pass. "What is this administration trying to leverage?" Konrad wondered, and that nobody he talked to was willing to discuss the fate of Hormuz "until European politicians and media stop calling Americans war criminals and monsters." While Konrad admitted he has "no idea" when Hormuz will reopen, "but if the price is a modicum of cooperation and...

The US president said the UK has aircraft carriers "that didn’t work"LONDON, April 1. /TASS/. US President Donald Trump doesn’t think too highly of Great Britain’s naval fleet. "You don't even have a Navy. You’re too old, and have aircraft carriers that didn’t work," he told The Daily Telegraph, referring to the state of Britain’s fleet of warships. In mid-March, the American leader had already voiced his disappointment with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer over London's lack of support for the military operation in Iran. In particular, he blasted the British aircraft carriers. When asked whether Starmer should spend more...

A third US aircraft carrier strike group is deploying to the Middle East as war with Iran rages on. George Bush is headed back to the Middle East, ready for war. The USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier will be sailing to the Middle East with a fleet of support ships in tow, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday. That news came after the Bush carrier group departed from its base in Norfolk, Virginia, in what Navy Times initially reported was a pre-scheduled deployment. It will join two other aircraft carrier groups already in the Middle East — the...

Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei on Monday mourned IRGC Navy Chief Commodore Alireza Tangsiri, calling him a “brave commander” who “attained martyrdom after years of struggle,” according to state news agency IRNA. Khamenei also described Tangsiri as courageous and central to Iran’s role in the Persian Gulf, adding that he “died for his country” so its military “may continue on the path of Iran’s maritime authority and resistance, stronger and more firmly than in the past.” Tangsiri, 64, died of injuries sustained while on duty, the IRGC said, after working to strengthen Iran’s coastal defenses, though Israel says he was...

The U.S. Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), has been pulled from active operations in the Red Sea and sent to Naval Support Activity Souda Bay in Crete following a March 12 onboard fire and mounting system strain after months of sustained combat operations. The fire, which broke out in the ship’s main laundry area, injured sailors, damaged living spaces, and required hours of firefighting and recovery efforts. After nearly nine months at sea – one of the longest and most demanding deployments in recent Navy history – there is growing concern that the Ford could now...

The Royal Navy was facing growing criticism over its effectiveness as Defence Secretary John Healey struggled to say how many warships it has. The Cabinet minister came under fire after been grilled on how many frigates there are in the navy as he took to the airwaves to say British forces may now intercept Russian “shadow fleet” vessels in the Channel. “We have...we have...we have...we have...we have...we have 17 frigates and destroyers,” he told LBC Radio. “It’s down from 23 at the end of the last Labour government.”

An Israeli air strike has killed the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) navy, Israel’s defence minister says. The assassination of Alireza Tangsiri was carried out on Wednesday night and targeted other “senior officers of the naval command”, Israel Katz said on Thursday in a video statement. “The man who was directly responsible for the terrorist operation of mining and blocking the Strait of Hormuz to shipping was blown up and eliminated,” he said. Since the start of the United States-Israel war on Iran on February 28, Israel has announced the assassination of several top Iranian officials, including...

Donald Trump today described Britain's aircraft carriers as 'toys compared to what we have' in his latest swipe at the UK's lack of support for his war against Iran. In yet another sign of the deep freeze consuming the transatlantic 'special relationship' the president lashed out at the Royal Navy's capabilities in a rant against US Nato allies. Speaking to reporters at the White House on Thursday, the US President said: 'The British said "we'll send our aircraft carriers" - which aren't the best aircraft carriers by the way, they are toys compared to what we have - "we'll send...

An elite Iranian navy chief who gave the green light to close the Strait of Hormuz has been killed in an airstrike on Thursday, according to a report. Alireza Tangsiri, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy commander, was eliminated in a strike on the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas, located on the Strait, an Israeli official told the Jerusalem Post. Neither the Israeli Defense Forces nor the Iranian military has commented on the strike. Tangsiri’s reported death comes after the assassinations of IRGC spokesperson Ali Mohammad Naini, and the regime’s de-facto leader Ali Larijani, and its anti-protest enforcer Gholamreza...

The United States’ largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, on Monday reached Crete, Greece for repairs after leaving the Middle East due to a fire onboard. Photos from AFP show the aircraft carrier arrived at Souda Bay naval base, where it had last stopped in February for food, fuel and ammunition. The ship was damaged due to a fire in the laundry room on March 12 amid the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. With the Ford now in Greece, the U.S. military only has one aircraft carrier in the war against Iran unless Washington sends another such vessel...

HMS Dragon has arrived in the eastern Mediterranean, three weeks after an Iranian-made drone hit the British base of RAF Akrotiri, the defence secretary has said. The Type 45 destroyer will begin “operational integration into Cyprus’s defence” from Monday night, John Healey told MPs. The British government has faced criticism for the slowness to deploy a warship to the region, after moves by Greece and France to send extra naval support to Cyprus after the attack. The Cypriot government has also expressed concern that the drone was able to hit the base, suggesting that the presence of the British base...

The once mighty Royal Navy is but a shadow of its former self, reduced to a tiny handful of often broken warships by generations of political mismanagement. This was cruelly exposed recently when Britain found it difficult to dispatch at short notice a single destroyer to Cyprus following an attack on the British base there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NNZ2u2WDD0&t=883s SUMMARY >>> 2. Cost asymmetry **************** Mine: ~$1,500 Destroyer: ~$2 billion Ratio: 1 : 1.3 million This makes mines one of the most cost-effective weapons ever created. 3. Geography of the Strait of Hormuz ************ Only a 6-mile-wide shipping corridor actually needs to be mined. Iran doesn’t need to block the whole strait—just the key lanes. 4. Psychological & economic impact ************ Mines act as an “insurance weapon”: One explosion → insurers withdraw coverage Tankers stop entering the region Trade halts without further attacks Critical insight: ************* The goal isn’t to destroy ships—it’s to trigger fear and shut down...

The U.S. military has accelerated the deployment of thousands of Marines and sailors to potentially help reinforce its troops fighting against Iran, officials tell Newsmax. Three officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, say the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group and the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit are deploying ahead of schedule from the West Coast. They are expected to sail through the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East region after the Navy was ordered to heighten its posture with additional fire power. The Boxer Amphibious Ready Group includes the USS Boxer amphibious assault ship along with the USS Portland and USS Comstock amphibious...

Keir Starmer held a call with Donald Trump today after the US president urged Britain to send warships to the Middle East to help police the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said he hoped the UK would be among "many countries" to help combat Iranian efforts to block the crucial waterway, through which 20% of the world's oil transits. Writing on Truth Social, he said the UK, China, France, Japan and South Korea will "hopefully" be sending warships to the shipping route, before issuing a second plea, saying countries "that receive Oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that...

Thousands of Chinese fishing boats have been massing in geometric formations in the East China Sea, in coordinated actions that experts believe are part of Beijing's preparations for a potential regional crisis or conflict. Monitoring ship-tracking data on Christmas Day, Jason Wang could tell something "unusual" was underway as fishing boats swarmed into two parallel inverted Ls,each about 400 kilometres (about 250 miles) long. Wang could see the roughly 2,000 fishing boats among the many thousands of vessels that ply the busy waterway through their automatic identification systems (AIS) -- a GPS-type signal that commercial ships use to avoid collisions.

Iran has begun laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf channel that carries 20 percent of the world’s oil, according to U.S. officials, an effort that could further complicate American efforts to restart shipping there. While the U.S. military said it had destroyed larger Iranian naval vessels that could be used to quickly lay mines in the strait, Iran began using smaller boats for the operation on Thursday, according to a U.S. official briefed on the intelligence.

Washington — An Iranian vessel sailed too close to the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, and the U.S. fired at the vessel, according to two U.S. officials briefed on the matter who spoke to CBS News under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The officials said a U.S. Navy vessel attempted to fire on the Iranian vessel using its 5-inch, 54-caliber Marck-45 gun, a fully automated naval cannon that is mounted to the forward deck of Navy destroyers and cruisers and has served as the fleet's standard deck gun since the early 1970s. While it's...

SAN DIEGO, Calif. (FOX 5/KUSI) — USS Nimitz, the U.S. Navy’s oldest serving aircraft carrier, which supported military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, pulled into San Diego for the last time on Tuesday before being decommissioned this year. USS Nimitz is considered a “supercarrier” of the U.S. Navy, the lead ship of her class and one of the largest warships in the world. It was named after Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet during World War II. The carrier was commissioned in 1975 and was homeported on the East Coast in Norfolk, VA, before...