Tehran issues new threats against American interests in Persian Gulf following recent attacks

A cargo ship was attacked in the Persian Gulf on Sunday morning, as tensions mount over access to the Strait of Hormuz, following U.S. strikes on two Iranian oil tankers on Friday and Iranian attempts to impose control over the vital waterway.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center, operated by the British military, said a ship off the coast of Qatar caught fire after being struck by an unknown projectile.

According to reports, the fire was quickly extinguished and there were no reported casualties in the attack.

The incident comes amid threats by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to retaliate against U.S. military interests in the region and following an American strike on two Iranian oil tankers attempting to avoid the U.S. blockade of vessels transiting the strait to or from Iranian ports.

On Sunday morning, the IRGC Navy Command issued a warning, saying any strikes on Iranian vessels would result in retaliatory attacks against “American centers in the region.”

“Warning! Any attack on Iranian tankers and commercial vessels will result in a heavy attack against one of the American centers in the region and enemy ships,” the IRGC Navy Command stated.

At the same time, the Iranian military said that vessels of countries participating in U.S. sanctions against Iran “will face difficulties in passing through the Strait of Hormuz.”

In an interview with the regime-affiliated news agency IRNA, Mohammad Akraminia, the spokesman for the Islamic Republic Army, said that Iran has “the right to exercise sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz,” and would begin enforcing it.

“From now on, countries that follow the US in imposing sanctions on the Islamic Republic will definitely face difficulties in passing through the Strait of Hormuz,” Akraminia said.

However, in an interview, Abbas Maleki, former deputy foreign minister, contradicted the claim that the Islamic Republic has sovereignty over the Strait. He noted that the width of Iran’s territorial waters in the Strait of Hormuz is about 15 nautical miles, saying, “In the Strait of Hormuz, we have rights, but we do not have ownership.”

“According to international law of the seas, innocent passage and transit passage for ships are recognized,” Maleki added.

Meanwhile, the commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force said Iran’s missiles and drones are “locked” on American targets and ships across the Persian Gulf region, the regime-affiliated Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) reported.

“The missiles and aerospace drones are locked on the enemy, and we are waiting for the firing order,” Brigadier General Majid Mousavi said in a statement posted on social media on Saturday evening.

Meanwhile, with no official response from the Iranian regime to U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent proposal for ending the war, the IRGC has launched a new authority for governing the Strait of Hormuz, as it continues to attempt to exert sovereignty over the waterway, which is shared by other Gulf states.

Iran is launching the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA), which is the main body that the regime says ship captains or operators can apply to for guaranteed safe passage through the Strait. The authority has an Excel spreadsheet which captains or operators are instructed to fill out in order to request safe passage, which likely includes a fee paid to the IRGC.

Currently, around 1,600 vessels are trapped in the Persian Gulf, which includes over 20,000 international sailors, who have been unable to leave due to the Iranian closure of the Strait and the U.S. blockade on vessels traversing the Strait to and from Iranian ports.