The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran's ideological military force, fired at least two missiles at commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz overnight into 7 July. One hit the Qatari liquefied natural gas carrier Al Rekayyat on the port side about eight nautical miles east of Limah, Oman; the vessel, operated by the Qatar Gas Transport Company (Nakilat), caught fire, though all crew are reported safe and no spill has been recorded1. UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), the Royal Navy body that logs Gulf incidents, reported a second, unnamed tanker struck in the same window.
For six weeks the corps had answered the Hormuz corridor dispute with statements and boarded no one. It struck the container ship Ever Lovely inside the maritime safe-passage corridor on 25 June, then suspended that corridor outright, and disputed Oman's fee proposal without boarding a single ship. Traffic had returned to pre-war levels only days earlier. Overnight the grievance became live fire.
Rear Admiral Ali Azmaei surfaced as IRGC Navy commander last week without a published decree, and Iran's Central Command is consumed by the funeral of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. That timing muddies any clean reading of who ordered the strike: a single attack mid-funeral could be a newly installed commander flexing locally as much as a Tehran-level decision. Against that, the escalation sits on the exact corridor the corps has contested for six weeks, not a random target, which points the other way. No Iranian official has yet claimed or disowned the attack.
