Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said the Panama-flagged tanker El Gaia struck a naval mine while transiting the Strait of Hormuz, setting the vessel alight. US Central Command (CENTCOM) called that account false, saying an Iranian missile disabled El Gaia the previous month, that an Iranian drone attacked it again over the weekend of 12 and 13 September while it sat in waters off Oman, and that a regional partner now has it under tow1. Both are belligerents describing an incident in which each accuses the other, so both are claims. We report the two versions and adjudicate neither, because nobody outside either military has boarded the ship.
A mine casualty and a missile casualty fall under different clauses, and often different policies, so the flag state, the master and the cargo's insurer each need a fact that neither account supplies. A mine also implies a laid, indiscriminate hazard sitting in a shipping lane, which changes the routing advice for every vessel behind El Gaia. A missile strike on one named ship does not.
Through August the Hormuz incident record was defined by silence: unclaimed strikes, unnamed vessels, no flag and no operator, as when a crew member was killed off Hengam Island with nothing published about the ship. Naming has now started, and it has produced contradiction rather than clarity. The data that would ordinarily arbitrate, a hull's own position and identity broadcast, has been switched off by the ships themselves.
