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For several days, US forces have responded to a number of IRGC attacks in the Strait of Hormuz area by launching counterattacks of their own. This series of tit-for-tat strikes appears to have been initiated by IRGC attempts to stop individual ships slipping through the waterway.
The latest exchanges began on the morning of June 6, when, according to the IRGC, four tankers were engaged as they attempted to leave the Arabian Gulf without clearance from the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA). The IRGC claims one tanker was disabled and the three others turned back, a claim not verified by any other source. A CENTCOM statement said nothing about tankers being targeted, but said that it had shot down four attack drones approaching shipping channels. It had then followed up by destroying a communications tower on the southeastern coast of Qeshm, and other targets in the Sirik area on the eastern side of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran responded further by launching missile and drone attacks on Bahrain and Kuwait before daybreak, with CENTCOM reporting that six out of seven missiles had been intercepted and that the seventh had dropped short.
From these reports, it is clear that CENTCOM is keeping a very close watch on IRGC sites and units that threaten the Strait of Hormuz, and is ready to intervene when the IRGC initiates or mobilizes for action. CENTCOM is able to do this without having manned vessels on the water in the strait, principally using airborne surveillance assets. CENTCOM has denied that it has resumed escorting ships through the strait, as it sought to do in the short-lived Operation Project Freedom, which was paused on May 6.
It appears, though, that a different approach is being adopted, in which CENTCOM advises shipowners of safe routes and danger areas, and conducts over-watch from the air of ships taking a southerly route through the Strait, hugging the coast and staying within Omani territorial waters. The US or others may have deployed autonomous mine clearance equipment to prove routes and channels. The activity may not be directly supported by Oman, but permitted under its insistence that there should be free and unrestricted transit use of the strait for innocent passage, and it may be this neutral approach which provoked the Iranian drone attack on the Mina Al Fahad oil terminal on June 5. Reports suggest that about four ships a day are taking this path, which is clearly being conducted without publicity and under careful control, and probably only with willing ships from selected flags.
Key to this new approach is the use of American attack helicopters, which have the radar and target acquisition systems to detect incoming air and sea drones and engage at short range, presumably having been tipped off by high-flying, long-range surveillance platforms covering the Iranian coastline. High levels of US aerial activity over the Gulf are indicated by the near-constant presence of KC-46A refueling aircraft, keeping tactical strike aircraft topped up and ready for committal.
The Iranians are also trying to slip ships through the strait, but have a rather harder task. While US-sponsored ships are essentially safe once they reach Fujairah, for ships using the services of the PGSA there is no release, with the US Navy globally omnipresent. The US Navy in recent days intercepted the fully laden, Curacao false-flagged VLCC Davina(IMO 9746499) hiding off the coast of Sri Lanka, which had slipped through the Strait before the US blockade was imposed. US Indo-Pacific naval forces have seized three other sanctioned ships in the Indian Ocean area in the last month, but have not yet seized sanctioned ships with Iranian floating stocks on board that are holding off Eastern Malaysia.
Fuente: The Maritime Executive
