US military says Hellfire strike disabled tanker bound for Iran’s Kharg Island

Event report — June 2, 2026

A US aircraft fired a Hellfire missile into the engine room of an oil tanker travelling toward Iran’s Kharg Island, disabling the vessel, according to US Central Command. The military said the action occurred on June 2, 2026 and prevented the ship from reaching Iran.

CENTCOM identified the vessel as the M/T Lexie, a Botswana-flagged tanker. It said the ship was unladen and moving through international waters in the direction of Kharg Island when US forces began warning its crew and instructing it to alter course.

According to the command’s account, the crew did not follow repeated directions over a 24-hour period. An aircraft then struck the tanker’s engine room with the missile. CENTCOM described the purpose of the strike as disabling the vessel rather than sinking it and said the intervention stopped its onward journey.

The account did not report a cargo aboard the Lexie, describing the tanker specifically as unladen. It also did not provide details about casualties, damage beyond the engine room or the crew’s status after the strike. The military statement, as relayed in the available report, was the source for the sequence of warnings, the weapon used and the tanker’s intended destination.

The action took place amid a US effort to restrict shipping to and from Iranian ports. CENTCOM began enforcing a blockade of maritime traffic entering and leaving those ports on April 13, according to the report. The command said US forces had disabled six commercial vessels and redirected 122 while a ceasefire with Iran remained in effect.

That ceasefire began on April 8 following Pakistani mediation. Later talks in Islamabad did not produce a lasting agreement, the report said. The pause followed an escalation that began when the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran on February 28. Iran responded with attacks aimed at Israel and US allies in the Gulf and closed the Strait of Hormuz.

Against that background, the Lexie incident represented a direct use of force against a commercial vessel under the maritime restrictions. CENTCOM’s account emphasized both the ship’s course toward Kharg Island and its crew’s alleged failure to comply before the missile was fired.

The supplied report did not include a response from the tanker’s crew, its owner, Botswana or Iranian authorities. As a result, key factual claims about the warnings and the decision to strike remain attributed to CENTCOM. What the statement established as the US military’s position was that an unladen commercial tanker was ordered away, did not comply over the stated period and was then immobilized by a missile strike on its machinery space.