Three Nights, 300 Targets: Iran Shuts the Strait of Hormuz
And Sprays Missiles Across Five Nations.
On Saturday evening, July 11, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard attacked the M/V GFS Galaxy, a Cyprus-flagged container ship transiting the Strait of Hormuz — then declared the world’s most important oil chokepoint closed “until further notice.” One civilian crew member is missing and ten were rescued, all Indian nationals according to India’s Ministry of External Affairs. By Sunday the IRGC had fired warning shots at a second merchant ship and hardened its terms: the strait stays shut “until the end of US interference.”
The American answer came at 7:15 p.m. Eastern. US Central Command opened a third round of strikes — roughly 140 targets overnight, pushing the three-night total past 300 — hitting missile and drone launch sites, naval assets, ammunition storage, and coastal surveillance along Iran’s Gulf coast.
Then Tehran answered the answer. By Sunday morning, ballistic missiles and drones were flying at US positions in Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, and Jordan — and with the UAE issuing shelter alerts, six countries were reporting incoming fire or warnings in a single morning. Three people were injured in Qatar, including a child. At American gas stations, the war’s bill kept arriving: $3.88 a gallon and climbing.
- ~140 — targets hit in CENTCOM's third round of strikes overnight July 11–12, via fighter jets, drones, and Navy vessels · Source: CENTCOM; The Hill
- 300+ — total targets struck across three nights of US strikes on Iran · Source: CENTCOM via Al Jazeera
- 6 countries — reporting incoming Iranian missiles, drones, or missile alerts in one morning — Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, and the UAE · Source: Al Jazeera; Euronews; The National
- $3.88/gal — national average gas price Friday, July 10 — up roughly 50% since the war began · Source: AAA; PBS NewsHour
- 800+ vessels — escorted through the strait by CENTCOM since early May, carrying some 400 million barrels of oil · Source: Fox News live blog
What Iran calls a closure is not a minefield. The IRGC Navy laid no mines, according to every account of the weekend; it issued a declaration and is enforcing it by attacking ships on what it calls “unapproved routes.” The GFS Galaxy was the first ship hit — disabled Saturday evening, with one crew member still missing. On Sunday, Iran International reported the IRGC stopped a second merchant vessel with warning shots. The declaration’s language shifted overnight from “until further notice” to something more explicitly political: closed “until the end of US interference.”
Washington’s position is that the declaration is a bluff backed by piracy. “Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz,” US officials said, demanding Tehran publicly state that the strait is open to all shipping. NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker put it flatly: “Iran cannot terrorize commercial vessels.” The maritime reality sits between the two claims — the Joint Maritime Information Center rated the threat “severe” but confirmed the southern transit corridor remains open in both directions, and tanker traffic is running at roughly 24 percent of pre-war levels.
A declaration alone moves markets because of what the strait carries: roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil trade passes through Hormuz. Brent crude closed Friday near $76 a barrel — up about 6 percent on the week — with WTI just under $72. Because the closure landed on a weekend, no market has yet priced it; Monday’s reopen will deliver the first verdict. For American drivers the bill is already itemized: a $3.88 national average Friday, up roughly 50 percent since the war began, though still below the May 21 peak of $4.56.
The quieter costs run through shipping ledgers. War-risk insurance for a Hormuz transit is running around 3 percent of a ship’s hull value, with some quotes reaching 5 percent — on a large tanker, millions of dollars per voyage before a drop of oil moves. And the reason any oil moves at all is the US Navy: since early May, CENTCOM has escorted more than 800 vessels carrying some 400 million barrels through the chokepoint. The world’s oil supply is, functionally, an American convoy operation.
~20% — share of global oil trade that transits the Strait of Hormuz.
~24% — current tanker traffic as a share of pre-war levels.
$76 / $72 — Brent and WTI at Friday’s close, before the closure; Brent up ~6% on the week. Markets were closed over the weekend — Monday reopens will price the escalation.
3–5% — war-risk insurance quotes as a share of hull value for a strait transit.
$3.88 — national average gas price Friday, up ~50% since the war began (May 21 peak: $4.56).
800+ vessels / 400M barrels — escorted by CENTCOM since early May.
The path to the third round ran through a collapsed pause. On Friday, July 10, US strikes were on hold while Qatar shuttled proposals between Washington and Tehran — a lull President Donald Trump (R) ended in a single post.
…the Cease Fire is OVER!
via Al Jazeera / NPR reporting
Through Saturday, the administration’s demand was specific: Iran must publicly declare the Strait of Hormuz open to all shipping. Tehran’s answer was the attack on the GFS Galaxy. Trump had already telegraphed what would follow.
Locked and Loaded… decimate and destroy all areas of Iran
via Al Jazeera / NPR reporting
At 7:15 p.m. Eastern, CENTCOM — commanded by Adm. Brad Cooper — announced the third round had begun. By morning, roughly 140 targets had been struck by fighter jets, drones, and Navy vessels: missile and drone launch sites, naval assets, ammunition storage, communications nodes, and coastal surveillance stations, concentrated at Veysian in Lorestan province, the Khondab base, and a string of sites across Bushehr province — Asaluyeh, Dir, Dashti, and Tangestan. No verified count of Iranian casualties from the round existed at publication.
At approximately 7:15 p.m. ET, US Central Command began a third round of strikes against Iranian military targets after the IRGC attacked the Cyprus-flagged merchant vessel M/V GFS Galaxy, leaving a civilian crew member missing — the US is 'imposing a heavy cost' on Iran.
Iran made a poor choice. Now they pay.
Sunday morning brought the widest single wave of Iranian retaliation of the war. By Tehran’s own claimed list, five nations were struck: ballistic missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar; drones against Patriot batteries, ammunition, and radar in Kuwait; drones at communications and radar sites in Bahrain, home of the US 5th Fleet, which went to its third alert of the war; strikes on platforms at Oman’s Duqm port and drones over Musandam; and ballistic missiles at Jordan’s Prince Hassan Air Base. Count the UAE’s missile alert, and six countries were warning residents or reporting incoming fire in one morning — and Jordan, it should be said, is not a Gulf state at all, whatever Iran’s “five Gulf nations” framing implies.
The human toll of the wave, so far as verified: three people injured in Qatar, including one child hit by shrapnel, per Qatar’s Interior Ministry; minor damage in Jordan, where Fox’s live blog reported three missiles; no US casualties reported in this window. The IRGC’s claim that it destroyed a US command center and MQ-9 drone hangars at Prince Hassan Air Base comes from Press TV — Iranian state media — and stands as Tehran’s account, not a verified result.
“The American-Zionist enemy should know that the continuation of its aggression will bring even more crushing responses… Bring it on, and we will fight back.”
IRGC statement, July 12, 2026, via Al Jazeera / Press TV
Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf posted a screenshot of the mid-June Islamabad memorandum — whose Article 5 addresses reopening the strait — and cast the weekend as America’s breach, not Iran’s. That document, signed when the summer’s first ceasefire was being assembled, is now the legal fig leaf over the war’s most dangerous escalation.
“The era of one-sided deals is OVER. We told you: keep your word or pay the price. Reality is knocking.”
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Speaker of Iran's Parliament, on X, via The Jerusalem Post
The Gulf capitals Iran claims to be defending from American interference lined up against Tehran instead. The Gulf Cooperation Council held Tehran “fully responsible” for its “destabilizing behavior”; Saudi Arabia issued its own condemnation of the attacks on Gulf states and Jordan; Oman — the war’s quiet mediator — summoned Iran’s ambassador. At the UN, Ambassador Michael Waltz pressed the Security Council, describing the US campaign as “directly aimed at Iran’s radar sensors, drones and missile batteries right there on the strait – to eliminate and degrade their ability to attack the global economy.”
Trump, on Sunday’s Meet the Press, dismissed the closure outright.
“It's open. We bombed the hell out of them last night.”
President Donald Trump (R), Meet the Press, July 12, 2026, via Fox News live blog
What happens next runs through two ledgers. One is in Tehran, where Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei — who succeeded his father Ali Khamenei after the elder’s killing in February and has pledged to avenge him — must decide whether a fourth round of US strikes is a price worth paying to keep the padlock on the strait. The other opens Monday morning, when oil markets price a weekend in which the world’s most important chokepoint was declared shut, 140 more targets burned inside Iran, and US bases in six countries came under fire before lunch. The Fox segment below, from an earlier phase of the war, captures how the escalation ladder looked before this weekend added three more rungs.
In 48 hours, Iran disabled a container ship, declared the Strait of Hormuz closed, and fired missiles and drones that put six countries on alert in one morning — and the United States answered with 140 more targets, bringing three nights of strikes past 300. The strait is not mined, the southern corridor is open, and CENTCOM is escorting the world’s oil through at gunpoint. But the diplomacy of July 10 is dead, gas is $3.88 and rising, and the next move belongs to a supreme leader sworn to avenge his father — and to Monday’s opening bell.
