CENTCOM confirmed via NPR that a US fighter jet fired rounds at the rudder of an Iranian-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman on 7 May, after the crew ignored multiple warnings1. The disabled vessel ceased transit toward Iran. CENTCOM is US Central Command, the combatant command running the strait of Hormuz blockade.
The cumulative blockade redirection figure now stands at 52 vessels, up from 48 on 3 May and 44 on 30 April, a rise of more than 18 per cent in a week. Project Freedom launched on 4 May and was paused by Trump within days; the blockade authority that produces the redirection ledger has continued to operate while the operation it sat alongside has not. The IRGC Navy's same-day "safe, stable passage" assurance posted on X was unchanged on its account at the time of the disabling.
Earlier interventions in the blockade involved boarding parties or course-change orders enforced by warship presence; rudder fire from a fighter jet is a different category. Disabling a vessel's propulsion mechanism in international waters with airborne ordnance is a tactic that maritime law treats more strictly than boarding, and CENTCOM's 7 May confirmation is the first publicly confirmed use in this campaign. Project Freedom remains paused, but the underlying authority that produces the vessel count has not been suspended alongside it.
The contradiction between the IRGC Navy's posting and the rudder fire is the operational core of the moment. Tehran's military arm is publicly issuing a permitting promise; the United States's combatant command is publicly demonstrating that the blockade enforcement is ongoing. The Persian Gulf Strait Authority's open registration channel has zero signed entries; the CENTCOM redirection ledger added one more on the same day. Both can be true at once because neither is yet contested in writing: the MOU proposes lifting the blockade over a phased timetable, and until Tehran returns a written reply, the count keeps rising.
