US Forces Disable M/V Huda in Gulf of Oman

A US military aircraft struck and disabled a commercial cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman on Saturday, after the vessel's crew repeatedly ignored warnings and tried to push through the American naval blockade of Iran.

CENTCOM identified the ship as the M/V Huda, flagged to St. Kitts and Nevis. The crew had departed from an Iranian port and made multiple attempts to continue through the region. US forces fired precision munitions at the stern. Before the strike, the crew was told to clear the sections about to be hit. UAE coastguard crews rescued 22 people from a fire in the Gulf of Oman that same day.

The M/V Huda is the fifth merchant ship US forces have disabled since the blockade took effect in mid-July. CENTCOM says 147 other commercial ships complied with redirect orders during that period. The command's unverified estimate is that the blockade has prevented Iran from exporting more than $25 billion in crude oil since it began.

The strike came a day after President Trump said US forces carried out limited attacks on an Iranian air defense system. Iranian state media reported explosions on Qeshm Island and in the port of Jask the same night. Iran's military claimed two tankers struck naval mines in the Hormuz area and caught fire, though those reports were not independently confirmed.

CENTCOM also announced Task Force Iron Gate on the same day, a roughly 20-person Tampa-based unit charged with restricting Iran's use of overland routes and the Caspian Sea to move weapons and sanctioned goods.

Vessel-tracking interest in the waters around the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman has been elevated for weeks, with the Qeshm, Ghalilah and broader Hormuz approaches running well above typical levels over the past 48 hours.

The Huda strike fits a broader pattern at this chokepoint. A limpet mine disabled the Panama-flagged tanker Louise 1 near Khasab in the Strait of Hormuz in late October, the first confirmed limpet mine strike since the war began. Two days before the Huda strike, South Korea's Cheonghae anti-piracy unit announced plans to redeploy to Duqm, pushing its patrol roughly 650 km closer to the strait.