IRGC admits ‘military conflict’ in Hormuz: ‘We hit small ships every day, the U.S. does not respond’

The spokesman of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hossein Mohebbi, has openly admitted what Washington has claimed for weeks: Iran has waged a “military conflict” in the Strait of Hormuz. “We have hit small ships and prevented them from passing for a long time,” Mohebbi said, as quoted in Al Jazeera‘s live updates of September 30. He added that the U.S. “does not respond because it knows it would lose the war”.

The statement came on the same day that the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency (UKMTO) announced it had received three delayed reports of ships hit in the strait — one of which, according to Al Jazeera, was left “not under command” after the strike.

Mohebbi spoke while Iran’s top leadership is considering the latest U.S. proposal, conveyed through Qatari mediation, to end the seven-month war in exchange for the reopening of Hormuz — a move Washington conditions on concrete progress on the nuclear issue.

The claim is Tehran’s most direct admission so far of ongoing operations against shipping in the strait that once carried a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies — and it comes just hours after Iran received the official U.S. response to its own plan to reopen Hormuz within seven days.