THE GULF IS ON FIRE.
American warships opened fire on a swarm of Iranian fast-attack boats in the Strait of Hormuz early Thursday, turning the world's most important oil chokepoint into a live-fire shooting gallery and sending shockwaves through global markets within minutes.
The Pentagon confirmed the strike in a terse statement that did almost nothing to calm nerves: U.S. naval forces, it said, acted "in self-defense" after what officials described as a reckless, high-speed charge by multiple Iranian vessels toward an American destroyer escorting a commercial tanker through the narrow waterway.
Translation? THE SHOOTING HAS STARTED.
According to two defense officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, the encounter unfolded in the pre-dawn darkness, when radar operators aboard the USS cruiser group picked up a cluster of small, fast-moving contacts racing out of Iranian territorial waters. The boats came in hot — 35 knots, engines screaming, fanning out in a classic swarm formation designed to overwhelm a single large warship.
Warnings were broadcast. Flares were fired. Horns blared across the black water.
The Iranians kept coming.
Then came the order every sailor dreads and every admiral prepares for: WEAPONS FREE.
The first rounds tore across the water at 4:12 a.m. local time. Within seconds, the night lit up like a fireworks display gone horribly wrong — tracer fire arcing over the waves, the thud of a five-inch gun, the bone-rattling boom of a close-in weapons system unleashing thousands of rounds a minute.
One boat erupted in flames. Another veered off, smoking. A third reportedly stopped dead