In announcing its first strikes on Iran in a month, the U.S. military said on Sunday that it had hit targets on Larak Island, a six-mile-long territory that provides a foothold for Iran’s military near the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz.
The tiny island has played an outsize role in Iran’s efforts to blockade the waterway, a major conduit for the world’s energy supplies that has become a focal point of the war with the United States.
Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for Central Command, said that U.S. forces had struck the island after observing Iranian forces there preparing to launch rockets armed with mines into the waters around the strait. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said in response that it had fired missiles early Monday at military bases in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates that host U.S. military personnel. There were no reports of damage or casualties.
Since the war began with U.S.-Israeli strikes in late February, Iran has sought to exert its authority over the Strait of Hormuz by establishing a system in which it charges ships for passage, which before the war had been free. At the heart of that strategy is a military outpost on Larak Island, one of a cluster of islands off Iran’s southern coast near the major port city of Bandar Abbas.
According to Iranian state media, the authorities control public access to Larak Island, which encompasses about 30 square miles, and limit its population to a few hundred households. Several years ago, the authorities even sought to promote Larak as a vacation destination: A 2021 article by the official Islamic Republic News Agency characterized the island as “a small pearl in the Persian Gulf with coral beaches and amazing nature,” offering swimming and snorkeling around nearby reefs and shipwrecks.
Larak is now part of a trio of islands — alongside the much larger and heavily militarized Qeshm Island and the nearby Hormuz Island — that gives Iran’s military a foothold near the gateway to the Strait of Hormuz. Located between the Iranian mainland and the coast of Oman, Larak offers Iran’s military a base to monitor passing ships.
After Tehran and Washington reached an initial cease-fire in April, Iranian military authorities began directing vessels transiting the strait to take a route that passed north of Larak, hugging Iran’s coastline, instead of using a more direct path through the center of the waterway. The middle of the strait is considered dangerous because of mines laid by the Iranian military, according to U.S. officials.
Iran and the United States signed a deal to reopen the strait in June. But it fell apart within weeks, and U.S. forces reimposed a blockade on Iranian ports. Since then, Iran has tightened its chokehold on traffic through the waterway, throttling oil and gas supplies and causing a surge in global energy prices.
Iran has fired on ships that have traveled along the farther side of the strait, near Oman, in what analysts say is an effort to lay the groundwork to charge tolls for passage.
The Iranian authorities have sought to formalize the arrangement by demanding that all transiting ships seek a permit from the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, an agency it created to administer passage through the waterway. Any deviation from the northern route near Larak would be considered a violation, it said.
Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting.
