US strikes Iran after IRGC drone hits Ever Lovely; IMO suspends Hormuz evacuation corridor

Summary

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy struck the Ever Lovely, an 8,500-TEU Singapore-flagged container ship operated by Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine, at 14:10 UTC on June 25, with a projectile that damaged the bridge 7.5 nautical miles southeast of Dahit, Oman. No crew were hurt. US officials confirmed IRGC responsibility to the Wall Street Journal. The attack followed an IRGC broadcast at 03:38 UTC on VHF Channel 16 declaring that ships must obtain Iranian permission before transiting the strait and that the US-designated Oman-coast route is "unacceptable and dangerous." At 15:30 UTC the IMO Secretary-General paused the organisation's evacuation convoy for 11,000 stranded seafarers. At least three tankers U-turned before the strait entry. The attack is the first confirmed vessel strike since the June 15 ceasefire memorandum between Washington and Tehran. On June 26, US Central Command launched retaliatory strikes against Iranian missile storage sites and coastal radar installations, calling the attack "unwarranted aggression" that "clearly violated the ceasefire." President Trump called it a "foolish violation of our Ceasefire Agreement." The IRGC denied any involvement, with spokesperson Brigadier General Hossein Mohebbi calling the US attribution "a complete lie."

The split

The IRGC denied involvement entirely, with its spokesperson calling US attribution "a complete lie," while US CENTCOM publicly framed its retaliatory strikes as a proportionate response to a clear ceasefire violation. Tehran asserted that "the Strait of Hormuz is Iranian territory," maintaining its position that any transit restrictions are a sovereign right. Western outlets, particularly maritime and Israeli press, treated the US strikes as the clearest sign yet that the ceasefire framework is fracturing. Arab Gulf coverage noted that tankers serving Saudi and Emirati ports had already returned to the longer Cape of Good Hope route before the US retaliation, and the CENTCOM strikes push the route decision further toward permanent re-routing.

By the numbers

• 14:10 UTC, time of the UKMTO-reported strike on June 25
• 7.5 nautical miles, distance southeast of Dahit, Oman where Ever Lovely was hit
• 39 ships per day, traffic through Hormuz in recent days, versus roughly 100 pre-war
• 3 tankers, count that U-turned before the strait entry following IRGC warnings
• 20% of global oil supply, Hormuz's share of world seaborne petroleum trade
• 40%, approximate fall in Brent crude from wartime peak before today's incident

Why it matters

The attack directly tests the June 15 ceasefire MoU that promised to reopen Hormuz to commercial shipping toll-free for sixty days while Washington and Tehran finalize a comprehensive deal. If the IMO's ship-movement process remains frozen, insurers will again price war risk into tanker voyages through the strait, undoing the brief post-ceasefire oil-price decline. The incident arrives while US-Iran talks on nuclear inspections are already in public dispute, reducing the room either side has to de-escalate quietly.

What to watch

• Whether Iran acknowledges or formally responds to the CENTCOM strikes, and whether those strikes trigger further IRGC action against shipping
• IMO decision on whether to permanently suspend the southern Hormuz evacuation corridor or attempt to restart it with Iranian assurances
• Brent crude war-risk premium trajectory as insurers reprice post-US-retaliation
• Whether the US retaliatory strikes derail the US-Iran nuclear negotiations, which were already in public dispute over IAEA access