CENTCOM said a helicopter opened fire on the engine room of the Panamanian-flagged Bellanova as diplomatic relations between the United States and Iran remain stalled.
Published August 11, 2026
The US military said it opened fire on a ship attempting to break through an Iranian port blockade in the Gulf of Oman.
Tuesday’s attack comes during a period of relative calm in the U.S. and Israel’s war against Iran, which has largely halted attacks since a 13-day escalation in July. This comes after a ceasefire as part of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by the US and Iran in June appeared to be falling apart.
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The U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees the Middle East, said in a statement that a Navy helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles at the Panamanian-flagged cargo ship Bellanova.
The ship “attempted to breach the U.S. blockade against Iran by passing through the Gulf of Oman and sailing toward Iranian ports,” the statement said.
Centcom said the attack targeted the ship’s engine room and disabled its steering gear, and claimed the crew “ignored repeated warnings from the U.S. military.”
It did not say whether any crew members were injured in the attack. Centcom said in a statement on Tuesday that the U.S. military had disabled 55 commercial ships through an Iranian port blockade, disabled three “non-compliant vessels” and boarded two.
Amid the recent resurgence of hostilities, the United States reimposed a naval blockade of Iranian ports and Iran reasserted control of the Strait of Hormuz. Both of those conditions were lifted as part of a June memorandum aimed at starting new negotiations on a more durable peace and the future of crippling sanctions against Iran and its nuclear program.
Efforts to return to the deal have so far made little progress, with President Trump on Monday appearing to up the ante by demanding that Iran pay for “50 years” of damage. The Iranian government has previously called for reconstruction funding to be included in any deal, and a June memorandum included tentative plans for a $300 billion fund.
The conflict has been further complicated by recent fighting, with attacks by the Yemen-based Houthis on ships in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, another major trade route in the region.
Iran, meanwhile, has largely focused its diplomatic efforts on direct negotiations with Oman to determine new shipping routes in the Strait of Hormuz, the main waterway through which 20 percent of the world’s maritime fossil fuel trade passed before the war that started between the United States and Israel on February 28.
Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency quoted Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, as saying on Tuesday that the Strait of Hormuz “will not open until the United States changes its behavior and accepts Iran’s terms.”
He insisted that any agreement with Oman would be “separate” from the issue of closing the strait.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi arrived in Tehran on Tuesday for talks with Iranian officials in the latest effort toward broader mediation in the war.
