The head of US Central Command (Centcom), which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, claimed that 17 Iranian vessels, including its “most operational” submarine, have been destroyed, external.
“For decades the Iranian regime has harassed international shipping,” Adm Brad Cooper said in a video posted to X. “Today, there is not a single Iranian vessel underway in the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz or Gulf of Oman, and we will not stop.”
Some vessels reportedly destroyed may have been obscured in satellite images by cloud or smoke, or struck at sea, and have not been independently verified by BBC Verify.
Sri Lankan officials said on Wednesday that one Iranian ship was sinking near its waters and that it launched a rescue operation, with 140 people currently missing. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth later said that a US submarine struck an Iranian ship with a torpedo in the Indian Ocean.
Vice-Admiral Mark Mellett, ex-head of the Irish military, told BBC Verify that the US and Israeli attacks appeared to have “largely neutralised for now or at least suppressed” the Iranian navy’s ability to sustain conventional attacks using its biggest warships.
But he emphasised that Iran retains the ability to launch unconventional attacks at sea through the use of drones, mini-submarines and shadow fleet vessels – a network of tankers sailing under obscured ownership. MAIAR analysts also told BBC Verify that Tehran could turn to smaller, fast-attack vessels armed with anti-ship missiles in the coming days as Iran’s largest warships continue to be targeted by US and Israeli strikes.
Iran also has the ability to disrupt commercial shipping, with Mellett observing that it could plant mines in key shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz or launch drone attacks on tankers and key ports.