On April 14, 1988, the frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts hit a SADAF-02 mine in the Persian Gulf. The explosion tore a 15-foot hole in the hull and broke the keel. Commander Paul Rinn would not give the order to abandon ship. “No higher honor,” he said, borrowing the vessel’s motto. Four days later the Navy answered.
Escorts, mines and a one-day war
The mine strike came during Operation Earnest Will. The U.S. had reflagged Kuwaiti tankers in 1987 and put Navy escorts around them as the Iran-Iraq War spilled onto merchant shipping, according to the Modern War Institute at West Point. The clashes began early. A reflagged tanker struck a mine in July 1987. In September, American helicopters disabled an Iranian ship caught laying mines, and U.S. forces later sank three other Iranian boats. After missile attacks on tankers that October, Navy warships shelled IRGC bases on Iranian oil platforms.
Operation Praying Mantis was the 1988 reply. Admiral William Crowe, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, ordered two Iranian oil platforms destroyed and the frigate Sabalan sunk, Military.com reported. Three Surface Action Groups went in at 8 a.m. on April 18.
The Iranian side of the ledger:
- The frigate Sahand sunk, with 45 crew killed
- The missile boat Joshan sunk, in what Military.com calls the only ship-versus-ship missile duel in U.S. Navy history
- The Sabalan crippled
- Two oil platforms destroyed
- At least three Boghammar speedboats destroyed, and one F-4 Phantom damaged
The U.S. lost two Marine helicopter pilots, Captains Kenneth Hill, 33, and Stephen Leslie, 30, when their AH-1T Sea Cobra crashed. Naval historian Craig Symonds ranks the battle among “one of the five most significant sea battles in United States history.” Iran lost roughly half its operational navy in hours, and the West Point analysis notes that it cut back its attacks on merchant vessels afterward.
2019 and 2020
The next major flare-up came three decades later. On June 20, 2019, Iranian forces shot down a U.S. military drone. Washington said it flew in international waters; Tehran said it had crossed into Iranian airspace. The next day Trump said he had called off a retaliatory strike that would have caused about 150 casualties, which he judged “not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone,” Al Jazeera recounted.
Nuclear steps followed. Iran passed the 300kg uranium stockpile cap on July 1, as UN inspectors confirmed, and on September 7 began injecting gas into advanced centrifuges.
Then came January 3, 2020. A predawn U.S. airstrike at Baghdad airport killed Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iran-backed militias. Tens of thousands mourned Soleimani on January 5. Three days later Iran fired missiles at two Iraqi bases housing U.S. forces. Trump said no Americans were hurt, announced new “powerful” sanctions and added that Iran “appears to be standing down.”
Sources
- Operation Praying Mantis: That Time America Decimated Iran's Navy
- How Should the United States Respond to Iran after the Tower 22 Attack? Lessons from Operation Praying Mantis
- US-Iran tensions: Timeline of events leading to Soleimani killing
