US attacks on Iranian tankers and Tehran’s retaliation are turning Hormuz into a central battlefield, reviving the logic and risks of the 1980s Tanker War.
In the early hours of Wednesday, 9 September, in the latest escalation in the Persian Gulf, the US military announced that it had targeted and destroyed five Iranian oil tankers after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired missiles at a US warship. According to the Associated Press, US forces said the crews had been warned to evacuate before the strikes. No casualties were reported on the American side.
The five vessels were named as Kivik, Charminar, Horizon 1, Riesco and Derya. Iran responded by launching missiles towards US targets in Jordan, most of which were intercepted, according to Jordanian officials. The Fars and Tasnim news agencies also reported that Iran had attacked several passing oil tankers attempting to leave the Persian Gulf through routes Tehran considers “unauthorised.”
Iran’s threats were not limited to US warships. In a statement carried by Tasnim, other domestic outlets and several regional media organisations, the IRGC Navy warned crews aboard tankers in Kuwaiti and Bahraini ports and anchorages to abandon their vessels because they could be targeted. The stated justification was that Kuwait and Bahrain host US forces and cooperate with Washington’s operations against Iranian oil tankers.
the IRGC Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters separately warned that if the naval blockade and “harassment” of Iranian ships continued, attacks on US naval vessels would become more intense and widespread. Taken together, the attacks and the two statements suggest that Tehran intends to spread the costs of the maritime war beyond the United States to its regional hosts and partners.
The maritime front has now become even more central to the Iran–US war. The sea was already a major theatre of the conflict: since the beginning of the current war, the Strait of Hormuz has been one of Iran’s principal means of raising its costs. But direct US attacks on Iranian tankers, followed by Iranian retaliation against ships, military bases and transit routes, have pushed the crisis into a new phase reminiscent of the “Tanker War” of the 1980s during the Iran–Iraq War.
In the final years of that war, tankers, oil terminals and energy-export routes themselves became part of the battlefield. Today, the same logic has returned, but with newer technology, more actors and a global market far more vulnerable to disruption.
Are we witnessing a Tanker War in the classical sense, or a new phase of sanctions and blockade dressed in military uniform? The short answer is: both.
Washington says Iranian oil tankers form part of the financial network sustaining the Islamic Republic and the IRGC, and presents attacks on them as an extension of its effort to cut off Tehran’s sources of revenue. At the same time, US pressure extends well beyond the tankers themselves, encompassing financial and banking measures targeting key choke points in Iran’s economy.
Tehran’s response targets precisely the same pressure point. Its message is that if the United States targets Iran’s oil exports and imports, others will not be allowed to pass through the Strait of Hormuz without paying a price.
For years, the Islamic Republic’s security strategy has sought to turn conventional asymmetry into leverage. Iran cannot match the United States in air power. It has no comparable military alliance, nor an economy so deeply integrated into global markets that attacking it would immediately impose major costs on everyone else.
More conventional sources of security—from alliances and durable agreements to deep economic integration—have either been eroded by the Islamic Republic’s own choices or placed beyond Tehran’s reach by US sanctions and international isolation. Iran has therefore increasingly relied on unconventional means of deterrence. Keeping tensions in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz elevated is part of that strategy.
What is emerging, then, is a second Tanker War.
The first intensified in 1984, during the Iran–Iraq War, and continued until the ceasefire of 20 August 1988.
Its logic was straightforward. Iraq sought to cut Tehran’s foreign-currency revenues by attacking Iranian oil exports, particularly the Kharg Island terminal. Iran responded by targeting vessels connected to Iraq and its Arab supporters, especially Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The message was that if shipping Iranian oil was unsafe, the oil exports of Iraq’s allies would not remain safe either.
According to figures published in the US Naval Institute’s Proceedings, 543 attacks on ships were recorded in the Persian Gulf region between 1981 and the 1988 ceasefire: 322 carried out by Iraq and 221 by Iran. Around 500 occurred during the classical Tanker War period from 1984 to August 1988. The conflict peaked in 1987, with 181 attacks in a single year.
Iraq relied mainly on aircraft and anti-ship missiles to target tankers and Iranian oil-export facilities, particularly Kharg Island. Iran relied more heavily on fast attack boats, mines, sporadic raids and attacks on Kuwaiti, Saudi and other vessels associated with Iraq’s supporters.
It was through this maritime conflict that the United States became directly involved.
In 1987, Kuwait asked Washington to protect its tankers. Under Operation Earnest Will, the United States reflagged Kuwaiti tankers under the US flag and escorted them through the Gulf. The operation ran from 24 July 1987 until 26 September 1988 and became the largest US naval convoy operation since the Second World War.
Yet the very first convoy demonstrated the limits of naval protection. The tanker Bridgeton struck a mine, after which US warships moved behind it to reduce their own exposure to further mines. The episode became an almost literal illustration of asymmetric warfare: the vessel being protected ended up serving as a shield for its protectors.
Several other incidents changed the course of the conflict. On 17 May 1987, the US frigate USS Stark was mistakenly struck by Iraqi Exocet missiles, killing 37 American sailors. Later that year, following a missile attack on the Kuwaiti tanker Sea Isle City, the United States struck Iran’s Rostam oil platforms.
On 14 April 1988, USS Samuel B. Roberts struck an Iranian mine and was severely damaged. Four days later, the United States launched Operation Praying Mantis, attacking Iran’s Sassan and Sirri oil platforms and inflicting substantial damage on its naval forces. At the time, it was the largest US naval engagement since the Second World War.
The Tanker War ultimately ended without a clear naval victory for either side. It subsided as the wider Iran–Iraq War reached exhaustion under mounting economic pressure, intensified Iraqi offensives on land, Iran’s loss of previously captured territory, growing US pressure in the Gulf and Tehran’s eventual acceptance of UN Security Council Resolution 598.
The Iran–Iraq ceasefire came into effect on 20 August 1988, after which the formal US escort operation ended. The Tanker War did not itself bring the wider war to a close; it faded as the main fronts cooled and a ceasefire took effect.
Today, however, there is a crucial difference.
The United States is no longer merely escorting tankers. Washington is itself a belligerent directly attacking Iranian vessels. Iran, meanwhile, is simultaneously targeting US naval forces, regional bases and shipping routes.
The second Tanker War is therefore no longer a peripheral maritime theatre of a larger land conflict. It has become one of the central fronts of the Iran–US war—if not, for now, its most active and dangerous front.
That makes the current confrontation more dangerous than a limited sequence of attacks. Each strike creates pressure for retaliation. Washington says attacks on US or allied vessels will bring attacks on Iranian tankers. Tehran responds that if its tankers are targeted, US assets across the region will become targets.
Politically, neither side can retreat easily. After months of war, the United States has still not achieved its original strategic objectives. The Islamic Republic has neither surrendered nor collapsed, nor has it entirely lost the means to impose costs on its adversaries.
Tehran, meanwhile, faces severe military, economic and maritime pressure. Retreating in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf could mean surrendering one of its last major sources of leverage. Both sides are therefore continuing a high-risk confrontation whose outcome neither can confidently predict.
The greater danger is that the Tanker War will not remain confined to the maritime front. Recent Iranian attacks on US warships—presented by Tehran as retaliation for their role in strikes against Iran and the enforcement of the naval blockade—mark a gradual movement towards a new level of confrontation.
A single miscalculation—or the intervention of another regional actor—could turn an exchange of attacks and counterattacks into something much larger. In such conditions, every missile or drifting mine in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz has the potential to trigger a crisis far larger than itself.
Some figures close to the Islamic Republic’s official narrative are already speaking as though the conflict will almost certainly move beyond limited attacks.
Mostafa Khoshcheshm, a military commentator who regularly appears on Iranian state television, said in an online discussion on Tuesday, 8 September, that Iran and the United States were moving towards an “all-out, high-intensity but short-term confrontation” in mid- or late autumn. In his view, this “final” confrontation could continue around the clock until “the matter is settled once and for all.”
He also said Iran wanted to “close this file once and for all” and claimed that the country’s armed forces had “surprises” in store for the United States not only in missiles and drones, but “at sea, on land and across the entire region.”
These remarks should not necessarily be read as an accurate military forecast or the disclosure of an operational plan. They do, however, show that within at least part of the political and media environment close to the Iranian establishment, the maritime conflict is understood not as the culmination of the crisis but as a likely prelude to a broader confrontation.
The comparison with the 1980s Tanker War is therefore useful, but the difference is just as important. Today’s Tanker War is one of the principal arenas of direct confrontation between Iran and the United States within a much broader conflict.
That war began with US and Israeli attacks on Iran on 28 February 2026, continued with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and has since spread across several fronts through sanctions, maritime attacks and missile retaliation.
Will it remain at this level? Without a diplomatic opening and some form of agreement, that appears unlikely.
