As President Donald Trump seems at ordering US Navy ships to escort oil tankers by means of the Strait of Hormuz, for naval analysts and historians, there’s a definite feeling of “been there, done that.”
Almost 40 years in the past, US Navy warships have been dealing with the identical enemy they’d be dealing with now, the navy and the sea forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The so-called Tanker War of the late Eighties noticed some of the identical weapons and issues a US escort drive would face in the present day, and supplies classes on how, in struggle, issues can go mistaken rapidly in surprising methods – with lethal penalties.
Here’s a have a look at how issues unfolded.
The seeds for the Tanker War have been planted in 1980, when Iraq’s secular chief Saddam Hussein, cautious of the theocratic revolutionary authorities in Iran led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, launched an invasion of his japanese neighbor.
After back-and-forth advances by each side in the early ‘80s, the situation had reached a stalemated war of attrition by 1984. That’s when Hussein determined to alter ways and assault Iranian oil tankers – to break Tehran’s economic system and hopefully get world powers to intervene to guard entry to grease.
Iraq used missile-armed jets to hit Iranian oil infrastructure on Kharg Island (the identical place the place the US bombed military installations in recent days). Iran responded by attacking impartial service provider ships transporting provides and arms to Iraq, a lot of these through Kuwait at the northern finish of the Persian Gulf.
“Iraq then began attacking tankers going to and from Kharg Island, and the ‘Tanker War’ was on,” historian Samuel Cox wrote in a 2019 history for the US Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC).
Shipping assaults by each side ballooned in quantity over in the subsequent two years, and in November 1986, Kuwait – drained of seeing its flagged ships hit – requested for international assist to guard them.
The Soviet Union lent assist first, escorting tankers by means of the Gulf.
Washington, not eager to lose affect to Moscow, devised a plan to reflag Kuwaiti ships as American, enabling them to get US Navy safety below federal regulation.
By the summer season of 1987, US Navy and Coast Guard ships had moved into the Gulf in numbers to escort the former Kuwaiti tankers.
But even earlier than escort missions commenced, US sailors discovered themselves in hurt’s method.
On the night of May 17, 1987, the guided-missile frigate USS Stark was on patrol in the central Persian Gulf, simply exterior a struggle exclusion zone, when an Iraqi warplane allegedly mistook the US warship for an Iranian goal and fired two Exocet anti-ship missiles into it.
“The two missiles killed 29 of Stark’s crew (of around 220) outright and another eight would die of their wounds and burns, with another 21 wounded,” the NHHC’s Cox wrote.
“Stark’s damage-control effort was nothing short of heroic,” he wrote. Despite the casualties and the crew battling fires as scorching as 3,500 levels Fahrenheit (virtually 2,000 levels Celsius) and correcting a extreme checklist from firefighting efforts that would have capsized the ship, the Stark would make it to port in Bahrain below its personal energy.
Iraq apologized, however the incident confirmed how in struggle errors can have catastrophic penalties. (In the present struggle, three US F-15 fighters were shot down by Kuwaiti forces in the same pleasant fireplace incident, although no US fliers have been killed.)
“The hazards to our men and women in uniform in the defense of freedom can never be understated,” President Ronald Reagan mentioned in an announcement shortly after the Stark assault.
There could be extra hazards to come back.
Dubbed Operation Earnest Will by the US Navy, the precise escorting of tankers started in late July 1987.
On July 22, two reflagged tankers left the United Arab Emirates headed for Kuwait below the safety of 5 US ships, a destroyer, two frigates and two Coast Guard cutters.
But Iran had good intelligence on the convoy and laid mines throughout a key channel in the Gulf {that a} huge tanker, the Bridgeton, must transit.
“On 24 July, Bridgeton struck an Iranian moored contact mine. The massive ship absorbed the power of the mine, which, despite the size of the hole, did not significantly impact the tanker,” mentioned Cox, who chronicled the consequence.
“The result, however, was one of the more ignominious photos in the annals of U.S. naval history, which showed Bridgeton arriving in Kuwait with her erstwhile US escorts following in her wake, apparently using the big tanker as a ‘minesweeper’ for their own protection.”
The incident was an enormous embarrassment for the US Navy.
The Pentagon suspended escort operations till it might get extra minesweeping property into the Gulf, nevertheless it was woefully quick on them and needed to flip to allies for minesweeping vessels, US Marine Corps 2nd Lt. Quentin Zimmer wrote in an essay last year for the US Naval Institute.
Even with allied assist, and with what property the US scrounged as much as rush to the area, “the correlation of forces — mines versus minesweepers — continued to outpace US capabilities,” Zimmer wrote.
The extent of present Iranian mining of the Gulf now is unknown. NCS reported final week that US officers imagine Tehran has laid some in the Strait of Hormuz, however there have been no reviews of mines damaging ships but.
Still, US minesweeping ships in the Gulf are few if any. Four devoted minesweepers stationed there have been decommissioned final yr. Two of the three littoral fight ships that have been to take over their duties have been in Malaysia this week for “logistical stops,” the Navy mentioned.
While President Trump referred to as for allies to dispatch minesweepers to assist preserve the Strait of Hormuz open, none have provided assist with {hardware} thus far. In a joint assertion Thursday, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan and Canada pledged “to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait,” with out specifying what these efforts is perhaps.
In the Tanker War, Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom answered the US name and took part in escorts and minesweeping. But solely US forces engaged in fight with the Iranians, in line with a report from the Middle East Research and Information Project.
Below the floor: the menace of Iranian mines in the Strait of Hormuz
The risks of mines proceed to restrict what the US Navy can do in the Gulf, mentioned Carl Schuster, a former director of the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.
“Mines have a chilling psychological as well as operational effect on maritime operations,” he mentioned.
Fear of them constrains how US warships can function in the Gulf, doubtlessly limiting the vary and impact of US Navy air and missile strikes into Iran, Schuster mentioned.
After the hit on the Bridgeton, the subsequent 24 escort missions got here to no hurt, the NHHC’s Cox factors out.
But a US ship that had simply accomplished the twenty fifth mission, the frigate USS Samuel B Roberts, noticed that luck run out on April 14, 1988.
While heading for resupply earlier than its subsequent escort mission, the frigate encountered a minefield laid by Iran the night time earlier than, in line with Cox.
After lookouts recognized the Roberts as being in a minefield, its captain noticed just one method out: return the method it had are available in.
It didn’t work. The warship struck a contact mine, and an estimated 500-pound explosive broke the Roberts’ keel and left a 15-foot gap in its hull.
“The only thing actually holding the ship together was the main deck,” Cox wrote.
Its crew saved it, partially, through the use of heavy metal cables to tie cracked parts of the ship’s superstructure collectively. And casualties have been held to 10 wounded as a result of the ship’s captain had ordered a lot of the crew above decks earlier than the mine strike.
The harm to the frigate introduced US minesweeping shortcomings to the forefront once more.
The mine strike on the Roberts precipitated a retaliatory US strike that noticed one thing unprecedented in US Navy history, and in line with one naval historian, one of the most important battles it has ever fought.
Four days after that Iranian mine virtually break up the Roberts in two, the US launched Operation Praying Mantis, US assaults on Iranian oil platforms in the Gulf.
One of these was attacked by a gaggle of three US ships, together with the frigate USS Simpson. During the preventing, an Iranian patrol boat fired a missile at the US ships.
The Simpson returned fireplace with 4 missiles of its personal, disabling the Iranian boat, earlier than it was completed off by gunfire from the US flotilla.
It was the first missile-to-missile floor battle in US Navy history.
There have been extra battles between the US and Iran that day, together with one the place US Navy A-6 assault jets and a US destroyer sank an Iranian frigate with missile strikes.
In his 2005 ebook, “Decision at Sea,” naval historian Craig Symonds referred to as Praying Mantis one of the 5 most essential US naval battles ever, rating alongside, amongst others, the historic US defeat of the Japanese Navy at Midway Island that modified the tide of World War II.
Symonds mentioned Praying Mantis established the US as the world’s undisputed superpower, with the potential to make real-time battlefield choices from hundreds of miles away, the potential to precisely fireplace missiles that would hit ships they may solely see electronically and the potential to combine all branches of the army service right into a cohesive machine.
The battle confirmed the US army had amassed the know-how to make it “not merely the greatest military power on Earth, but the greatest military power the world had ever seen,” Symonds wrote.
That’s a line Trump makes use of steadily when speaking about the present struggle in the Gulf.
But analysts and consultants observe circumstances have modified in 2026.
Technology has superior. Iran’s arsenal has elevated. Cheap drones – deployed in sea and sky – have expanded the menace matrix.
And Iran’s consideration is not additionally distracted by a border struggle with Iraq this time.
Experts surprise if the US floor warfare success led it to neglect mine countermeasures, one thing that is sluggish and meticulous in distinction to missile battles.
“The US Navy has very little mine-clearing capability. It is always the first thing eliminated in budget cuts because traditionally we rely on our allies for that mission,” Schuster, the former US Navy captain, mentioned.
Others query whether or not the US was prepared for Iran to successfully shut the Strait of Hormuz once more, and why the want for tanker escorts wasn’t deliberate from the starting of the struggle.
“History repeats itself,” mentioned maritime guide Frank Coles, ex-CEO of Wallem Group, who sailed in Tanker War convoys.
“Anyone who remembers the Iran-Iraq war knows escorts were needed then. It’s disappointing this wasn’t part of the thought process now.”
NCS’s Ivan Watson contributed to this report.