U.S. Sinks 9 Iranian Warships in Strait of Hormuz Campaign With Jamaran-Class Destroyed.

U.S. Central Command said American forces struck and sank an Iranian Jamaran-class warship at a pier in Chabahar during the opening phase of Operation Epic Fury. The strike targets Iran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping and allied naval forces near the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway critical to global energy flows.

U.S. Central Command says U.S. forces struck and sank an Iranian Jamaran-class warship at a pier in Chabahar, degrading a key surface-combatant capability Iran can use to threaten shipping and allied naval forces around the Strait of Hormuz. The sinking, attributed by CENTCOM to the opening phase of Operation Epic Fury, comes as President Donald Trump claims U.S. attacks have “destroyed and sunk” nine Iranian naval ships and severely damaged Iran’s naval headquarters, a campaign explicitly framed around preventing Tehran from closing the waterway.
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Jamaran-class ships pack a compact strike set: a 76 mm Fajr-27 gun, Noor or longer-range Qader anti-ship cruise missiles for standoff attacks, short-range SAMs for point defense, and lightweight torpedoes for limited ASW, all cued by surface and air-search radars (Picture source: OSINT/ Iranian Navy).

The operational logic is clear: Iran does not need to defeat the U.S. Navy to create strategic effects in Hormuz. It only needs to make the strait intermittently unsafe through a mix of harassment, mining, and precision fires that raise insurance rates, slow convoy cycles, and push commercial traffic to halt offshore. U.S. reporting tied to the current escalation describes Iranian messaging warning that Hormuz was “closed” and notes disrupted commercial routing around the chokepoint.

The Jamaran-class label used by CENTCOM is significant because it points to one of the Iranian Navy’s more capable domestically built surface combatants, generally associated with the Moudge program. Open-source specifications typically place Moudge-class ships at roughly 1,500 tons displacement and about 95 meters in length, with a top speed around 30 knots and a crew on the order of 140 personnel. Their combat value is anchored in a compact but credible multi-mission fit: an Iranian 76 mm Fajr-27 main gun, anti-ship cruise missiles commonly listed as Noor or Qader variants, short-range naval surface-to-air missiles often described as Mehrab or related systems, and lightweight torpedoes for basic anti-submarine warfare, paired with a modern surface-search and air-search radar suite.

A ship of this class matters less as a blue-water frigate and more as a mobile node in Iran’s layered anti-access system. In the Gulf of Oman and the approaches to Hormuz, a Moudge-type combatant can extend the detection and targeting picture, cue coastal missile batteries, and launch its own sea-skimming missiles against merchant vessels or escorts. The Noor is widely assessed as an Iranian derivative of the Chinese C-802 family, while Qader is described as an extended-range upgrade with cited ranges around 200 km, placing much of the Hormuz approaches inside a threat ring if targeting data is available.

The location of the sinking at a pier also reveals how Epic Fury is being executed. Striking a combatant in port is primarily a kill-chain problem, not a fleet-combat problem: persistent ISR, target confirmation, then a standoff weapon that can penetrate defenses with limited warning. Reporting around the operation indicates U.S. Navy destroyers fired Tomahawk land-attack missiles in support of Epic Fury, while U.S. Air Force B-2 bombers attacked hardened missile infrastructure with 2,000-pound precision weapons. That combination is consistent with a campaign designed to collapse Iran’s ability to coordinate and sustain maritime denial rather than chasing small craft at sea.

What remains less clear is the composition of the other nine naval ships claimed destroyed. The Pentagon has not published a ship-by-ship list as of March 2, and open-source analysts caution that early battle damage assessments can conflate hit, mission-killed, and sunk. Satellite imagery around Konarak and Chabahar reportedly showed smoke, debris, and a large vessel sitting low in the water at the naval wharf, with some uncertainty over whether the damaged hull was a Moudge-class ship such as IRINS Jamaran (F76) or, based on dimensions, a Bayandor-class corvette such as IRINS Naghdi (F82).

Even without confirmed names, the likely operational targets can be inferred from Iran’s order of battle and the specific threats the U.S. must suppress to keep the sea lane open. Iran’s older Alvand-class frigates remain relevant because their speed and anti-ship missiles allow them to surge quickly into firing positions, particularly under coastal air-defense umbrellas. Open specifications describe Alvand-class ships at roughly 1,100 tons displacement, about 1,540 tons full load, with gas-turbine sprint speeds approaching 39 knots and a modernized anti-ship fit that includes C-802-class missiles. Bayandor-class corvettes are smaller, around 900 tons, but are also commonly listed with C-802 missiles, a 76 mm gun, and torpedo tubes, making them useful for opportunistic strikes and patrol-denial around ports and islands.

Undersea and mining capabilities are even more central to a Hormuz denial strategy, which is why submarine facilities and command nodes matter as much as the ships themselves. Iran’s Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines are not numerous, but they are the most consequential single assets for covert mining and torpedo ambushes in constrained waters. Open references describe Kilo-class boats with six 533 mm torpedo tubes, the ability to carry a torpedo-heavy or mine-heavy loadout, and the endurance to lurk in the Gulf of Oman approaches where merchant traffic funnels. Mine-laying remains a core mission set for these submarines, a capability that can force slow, resource-intensive mine countermeasure operations even if no ship is actually sunk.

For Washington, degrading these naval tools is not primarily punitive. It is protective, aimed at reducing risk to U.S. carrier strike groups, logistics shipping, and commercial maritime traffic whose disruption quickly becomes a global economic event. The Strait of Hormuz routinely carries roughly one-fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption, making even partial disruption strategically outsized. That is why Epic Fury’s maritime dimension appears coupled to strikes on missile and drone launch infrastructure and on naval headquarters functions that coordinate Iranian patrol patterns, targeting, and escalation messaging.

The immediate outlook hinges on corroborated battle damage assessments and whether Iran shifts to its most resilient playbook: mines, shore-based anti-ship missiles, drones, and fast attack craft operating under land-based air defenses. Sinking a Jamaran-class combatant in port removes one capable launcher and sensor node, but it does not eliminate the broader maritime-denial system. If the U.S. objective is sustained traffic flow through Hormuz, the next phases will likely be defined by convoy management, rapid mine countermeasures readiness, and continued suppression of coastal targeting networks that can translate spotter data into missile-quality tracks.