US strikes Iranian oil tankers after missiles fired at Navy warships

American forces have hit three Iranian oil tankers in the Gulf after missiles were fired at US Navy vessels operating in international waters. The strikes mark a sharp escalation in a standoff that has simmered since Washington reimposed sanctions on Iranian oil exports.

The BBC and the Independent both report the tanker strikes followed missile attacks on American warships. The Pentagon has not detailed the extent of damage to the Iranian vessels or whether any were sunk. Iran has not yet issued a formal response, though state media are describing the action as an act of war.

The tankers were carrying Iranian crude - the commodity that keeps the regime solvent and which American policy has tried to choke off for years. Sanctions are a paper instrument; a missile is not. The shift from interdiction to direct strike changes the nature of the policy: it is no longer economic pressure but armed enforcement of a blockade that has no UN mandate. That requires either claiming self-defence or accepting that enforcement now runs ahead of law.

The Iranian missile launches gave Washington a self-defence argument, but the gap between defending a warship and sinking a tanker is the gap between response and objective. If the objective is to stop the oil moving, the strikes work. If it is to avoid a wider war, hitting state assets in international waters is a sentence with no full stop.

What to watch: whether Iran retaliates against US assets in the region, and whether the oil price moves in a way that forces European governments - already squeezed by energy costs - to take a public position on American enforcement they have privately welcomed.