Two Emirati cargo ships have sunk in the past 24 hours after being struck in the Strait of Hormuz, an escalation with little precedent as Iran ramps up attacks to levels not seen since the war started.
The GFS Pride and the Cape Dao have both gone down, said Pakistan's National Hydrographic Office, which monitors maritime activities in Middle Eastern waters. Maritime security companies confirmed the two losses Wednesday and said this was the first such incident in months.
The sinkings came as the U.S. military has been successfully shepherding more Gulf oil through the strait while bottling up Iranian oil exports with a naval blockade and sanctions. Iran has repeatedly ramped up attacks over the course of the war to try to disrupt the U.S. operation, but it is rare that its attacks result in ships being sunk.
The last ship that sank was Malta-flagged container vessel Safeen Prestige in early March. The vessel was hit by a projectile that sparked a fire in its engine room, forcing the crew to abandon the vessel. A tugboat sent to rescue the ship was also struck. Four seafarers died and three were severely injured, according to the International Maritime Organization.
GFS Pride, a containership, was hit Tuesday by an unknown projectile a nautical mile east of Ras Makhbuq, Oman, resulting in an onboard fire, according to maritime security companies Vanguard, Marisks and Neptune. The crew of the vessel was safely evacuated before the ship sank the next day, they said.
The Cape Dao was originally attacked on Sept. 23 by two unidentified projectiles that struck its port side when it was some 15 nautical miles northeast of Khasab, Oman. One Indian crew member died in the attack on the ship which was carrying about 170,000 tons of coal from the United Arab Emirates to India. The two vessels' owners, both based in the U.A.E., didn't return requests for comment.
Two other containerships and a tanker were also attacked on Tuesday as they crossed the strait, according to the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations, which is affiliated with the British Navy.
Vessel attacks around the Strait of Hormuz reached a wartime high last week with 12 attacks on commercial vessels, maritime-intelligence firm Windward AI said Tuesday.
About two dozen ships have been hit since the beginning of October, according to UKMTO and maritime security firms. That is more than the number of vessels struck in all of September.
On Tuesday, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps posted a video of what appeared to be the GFS Pride sinking. It said the vessel was carrying 2,500 containers of contraband and which had crossed by what it described as an "authorized and dangerous" route. Footage obtained by Marisks showed a vessel immersed in the water and its containers floating, and was the same ship posted by the Revolutionary Guard, according to Storyful, which is owned by News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal.
Vanguard identified three other vessels targeted on Tuesday as the Singapore-flagged GFS Giselle, the Marshall Islands-flagged Al Saadiyat and the Barbados-flagged Alfonso. The Alfonso is included in a blacklist of vessels Iran claims have violated its rules in the Strait. The extent of the damage to those vessels was unclear.
The attacks came after President Trump said Monday that the U.S. Navy had total control of the Strait of Hormuz and had completely shut Iran's ports.
On Wednesday, Ali Azmaei, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard's Navy, rebutted the president's claim. "If the Americans want to see whether the Strait of Hormuz is open or closed, they should enter the arena," he said. "We will deal with offenders, and we won't mince words."
Most of the ships attacked recently were transiting through a southern route under U.S. protection near Oman.
The Revolutionary Guard have claimed the vessels ran into mines after conducting what they said were illegal crossings. But maritime security and U.S. officials say there was no evidence such devices were involved.
The attacks represent "significant expansion in reach and targets in the past 96 hours," said Michelle Wiese Bockmann, senior maritime intelligence analyst at Windward AI. Their frequency correlates with increasing volumes of oil moving via the strait and dwindling Iranian control, she said.
While Tehran's exports have fallen to zero due to a U.S. blockade, exports from the rest of the region had recovered to 18.2 million barrels a day before the latest attacks, commodities data provider Kpler said Wednesday.
Volumes bypassing the strait between Oman and the U.A.E. as well as in the Red Sea are running above their prewar levels, showing producers' growing capacity to evade Iran's attempts to shut the routes, Kpler said.
As a result, Iran is expanding its targets to non-oil cargoes. Earlier in the war, seafarers viewed container or dry bulk ships as being relatively safe as they typically carry less valuable cargo than oil tankers, which can carry up to 2 million barrels of crude oil -- worth some $200 million -- in each trip through the strait. But attacks over the past week appear to have targeted both containerships and tankers.
Despite the attacks, shipowners continue to send vessels through the strait, lured by the high shipping rates they can charge. Rates for crude oil tankers reached fresh all-time highs last week, with those for very large crude carriers -- or VLCCs -- pushing up global rates to an average of $805,000 a day, said Steve Gordon, Global Head of Clarksons Research. Freight rates for liquid petroleum products tankers also reached all time highs, Gordon said.
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