Overview
- Abu Dhabi National Oil Company reported that two of its vessels were struck by drones while transiting the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday evening and said there were no injuries and the situation was brought under control.
- The UAE Foreign Ministry blamed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for the attacks and called them acts of piracy, a charge corroborated by the UK Maritime Trade Operations center and British military sources that reported minor damage to vessels.
- This incident is the second confirmed attack on ADNOC-linked ships in less than a week and follows a wider pattern of repeated strikes on commercial vessels in the waterway since the U.S.-Israel‑Iran conflict intensified in February.
- U.S. officials have signaled they can maintain a naval blockade indefinitely and are preparing a broad package of new economic measures aimed at Iranian networks, steps that could harden Tehran’s demands in fragile routing talks.
- The strikes have sharply reduced traffic through the Hormuz chokepoint, pushed up freight and insurance costs, and threaten wider disruption to global oil and LNG flows with direct consequences for seafarers, Gulf economies, and energy prices.