A U.S. fighter jet disabled the Curacao-flagged tanker M/T Belma on Wednesday as it tried to sail toward an Iranian port in the Arabian Gulf, the first time U.S. forces have crippled a vessel since President Trump reimposed the naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz this week. The ship, nearly 1,100 feet long and about 200 feet wide, was hit with a Hellfire missile in its smokestack after it ignored multiple warnings while transiting international waters toward Kharg Island, according to U.S. Central Command. The message from the top was plain. Move where we say, or get hit.
The blockade was lifted last month and reinstated Tuesday evening. In the first 24 hours, U.S. forces redirected two compliant commercial vessels, Centcom said. During the first version of the blockade, which lasted between April and June 18, U.S. forces redirected over 140 compliant ships, disabled nine and allowed more than commercial vessels backing humanitarian aid to pass through the blockade. Pentagon estimated that the first iteration of the blockade cost Iran around $4.8 billion in oil revenue as of May 1. The numbers tell the story of who pays when a military apparatus decides to police a waterway that carries oil and gas for the region.
Who Gets to Move, and Who Doesn’t
The U.S. military has resumed strikes against Iran at President Trump’s direction, hitting hundreds of targets along the coast of the Strait of Hormuz. On Wednesday, the kinetic action continued with U.S. forces attacking the country two separate times, which U.S. officials described as an effort to prevent Iran from targeting commercial ships trying to transit the waterway. The language is tidy. The reality is force. Commercial shipping gets sorted, redirected, disabled, or spared depending on what the armed state decides in the moment.
U.S. forces also conducted another round of strikes against Iran on Wednesday morning, targeting an Iranian island near the Strait of Hormuz after President Trump threatened wider strikes. Centcom said U.S. forces fired precision munitions against coastal defense systems and cruise missile storage and launch sites on Greater Tunb Island, in a wave that lasted about 90 minutes. Centcom said, “The strikes further degraded Iran’s ability to attack commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.” That’s the official line: degrade, disable, dominate. The people who live under these decisions don’t get a vote in any of it.
What the Powerful Call Security
The latest actions mark the fifth consecutive day the U.S. military has attacked Iran as Trump warned in an interview with Fox News that the U.S. will gradually expand its strikes across the nation’s infrastructure. Trump told Fox News’s Trey Yingst, “We’re going to hit them very hard tonight, we’re going to hit them very hard tomorrow night, we’re going to hit them very hard the night after, and then next week it gets really bad for them,” and added, “Because next week comes the power plants, next week comes the bridges.” He said the strikes will continue until Iranian negotiators “get to the table and negotiate.” That’s coercion dressed up as diplomacy.
Iran retaliated Tuesday, firing drones and missiles at U.S. bases in Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait. The cycle of escalation keeps rolling, with ordinary people and infrastructure sitting in the blast radius while leaders trade threats from behind podiums and screens. The blockade itself is a blunt instrument too, reimposed Tuesday on a key waterway for oil and gas shipping, while Trump walked back his proposal of charging a 20 percent toll on all cargo passing through the waterway to compensate the U.S. for security.
The whole arrangement runs on command from above. U.S. Central Command announces the strikes, the Pentagon tallies the losses, and the White House sets the pace. Down below, ships get stopped, ports get threatened, and the Strait of Hormuz becomes another corridor where state power decides who moves and who gets crushed.