On the evening of May 17, 1987, an Iraqi warplane fired two Exocet missiles into the US frigate USS Stark. Iraq said the pilot mistook it for an Iranian target. Twenty-nine of the roughly 220 crew died outright, eight more later died of burns and wounds, and 21 were wounded. Fires burned as hot as 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit, and the crew still got the ship to Bahrain under its own power.
It was an early lesson of the Tanker War, the Persian Gulf shipping fight of the late 1980s. Analysts are returning to it now because US forces face the same enemy in the same waters: the Iranian navy and the sea forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
How the Tanker War began
Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, wary of the revolutionary government led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. By 1984 the war was a stalemate. Hussein changed tactics and went after Iranian oil tankers, hoping to hurt Tehran’s economy and push outside powers into protecting oil access. Iraqi jets hit oil facilities on Kharg Island. Iran answered by attacking neutral merchant ships carrying supplies and arms to Iraq, much of it through Kuwait.
Attacks on shipping climbed over the next two years. In November 1986 Kuwait, tired of watching its ships hit, asked for foreign help. The Soviet Union escorted tankers first. Washington, unwilling to lose influence to Moscow, reflagged Kuwaiti ships as American so the US Navy could protect them. By the summer of 1987 Navy and Coast Guard ships were in the Gulf in force.
Mines and a famous photograph
The US called it Operation Earnest Will. The first escort began on July 22, 1987, when two reflagged tankers left the United Arab Emirates for Kuwait with five US ships: a destroyer, two frigates and two Coast Guard cutters. Iran had good intelligence on the convoy and mined a key channel.
On July 24 the huge tanker Bridgeton hit a moored contact mine. The ship barely noticed, but the photograph of it arriving in Kuwait with its American escorts trailing behind, apparently using it as a minesweeper, became one of the more embarrassing images in US naval history. The Pentagon suspended escorts until it could find more minesweepers, and had to borrow some from allies.
The next 24 escort missions were unharmed. After the 25th, on April 14, 1988, the frigate USS Samuel B Roberts hit an Iranian mine laid the night before. An estimated 500-pound charge broke the keel and tore a 15-foot hole in the hull. Heavy steel cables tied the cracked superstructure together, and only 10 crew were wounded because the captain had moved much of the crew above decks.
Four days later the US launched Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian oil platforms. The frigate USS Simpson answered an Iranian patrol boat’s missile with four of its own, in what was the first missile-to-missile surface battle in US Navy history. Later that day, A-6 attack jets and a destroyer sank an Iranian frigate. Historian Craig Symonds, in his 2005 book “Decision at Sea,” ranked Praying Mantis among the five most important US naval battles, alongside Midway.
What is different in 2026
CNN’s analysis, published in March, said technology has advanced, Iran’s arsenal has grown, cheap drones now add to the threat, and Iran is no longer distracted by a border war with Iraq. Carl Schuster, a former director of US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center, said mine-clearing capability is “always the first thing eliminated in budget cuts because traditionally we rely on our allies for that mission.” Four dedicated US minesweepers in the Gulf were decommissioned last year.
Frank Coles, former CEO of Wallem Group, sailed in Tanker War convoys. “Anyone who remembers the Iran-Iraq war knows escorts were needed then,” he said. “It’s disappointing this wasn’t part of the thought process now.”
