Kanal13The US Navy said it has sunk more than thirty Iranian ships thus far, including an Iranian drone carrier at sea that it struck in its unrelenting campaign against the Islamic Republic’s fleet of warships. US Admiral Brad Cooper, the chief of Central Command and commander of US forces in the Middle East, described the Iranian carrier stuck at sea as “roughly the size of a World War II aircraft carrier.” Recall, high-ranking members of the Iranian government and key naval assets were targeted by precise US-Israeli strikes, plunging the country into chaos. This resulted in a total command breakdown and confusion, with what can only be described as a fractured and desperate response, leading to shocking accidents where Iran targeted itself, RFU News media outlet says. It is noted that amid an attempt to retaliate, confused Iranian forces struck and heavily damaged the tanker Skylight in a friendly fire incident. Ironically, the vessel is part of the Iranian-Russian shadow fleet and was transporting sanctioned Iranian oil. Almost immediately after the strike, further reports emerged of additional Iranian attacks on two more shadow fleet vessels in the same maritime corridor.
The broader Iranian plan had been to fully blockade the Strait of Hormuz as a pressure point against the United States. Despite this, the intended strategic shock that Iran hoped for has not materialized in coherent form, with the closure threats having been accompanied by sporadic vessel strikes and maritime alarms that suggest improvisation rather than a structured denial strategy, as confirmed by the fact that in the end, the Iranians targeted ships connected to their own shadow fleet, RFU News says. This incoherence comes in light of the severe damage inflicted on Iran’s naval capacity. US forces confirmed strikes on a Jamaran-class frigate at Chabahar naval base, one of Iran’s relatively modern surface combatants equipped with anti-ship missiles, air defense systems, and torpedoes. Satellite imagery from the Konarak naval base revealed extensive damage to naval facilities and multiple other ships. Simultaneously, the joint US-Israeli operation delivered a devastating decapitation blow to Iran’s centralized leadership. Command headquarters, government buildings, and key military academies were hit. Israeli and US sources describe near-simultaneous strikes within seconds that severed the apex of Iran’s command structure, with the symbolic raising of a black mourning flag in Mashhad by the Iranians underscored the magnitude of the loss, RFU News reports.
The operational consequences of these targeted eliminations are visible, as Iran’s response has appeared fragmented, reactive, and at times self-defeating. Instead of a calibrated denial campaign of the Hormuz Strait, Tehran has issued warnings, launched scattered missile and drone strikes, and misidentified targets, as seen in the tanker Skylight incident. Shipping disruptions have been dramatic but tactically unstructured, with the attempted projection of control and a plan by the Iranians on how to counter US-Israeli attacks instead revealing total loss of control by the regime in Tehran. At a strategic level, inter-branch coordination appears just as strained as within the navy, with elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regular army, and naval forces operating with uneven synchronization. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has indeed acknowledged that some units are functioning without control and are isolated. While contingency mechanisms resembling pre-delegated retaliation orders may exist, such rigid responses cannot substitute a well-functioning command.
