Hormuz, Tehran claims attacks against American bases in Jordan and the Gulf

The first thing to note is the timing. The article in Le Monde reporting on the Iranian bombardments against bases in Jordan and the Gulf was published on September 11, 2026 at 07:06 and updated at 07:58: it is a developing story, and its content is for now what one outlet reports of a claim made by another party. According to the reported claim, the Revolutionary Guards targeted two American ships and eight tankers; another ten ships would have also been targeted.

On these numbers it is worth being explicit. They are figures from one side, communicated by the party claiming to have acted and picked up by an outlet: they are not a tally, they are not a verified assessment, and in the material available today there is no independent count confirming or reducing them. Nor is there, in the same way, an American version of the same exchange. What can be written with certainty is that the claim exists, is attributed and has been circulating since morning.

The context in which it takes place, however, is documented. The conflict began on February 28, 2026 with American and Israeli attacks against Iranian targets; from March 27 the Revolutionary Guards declared the Strait of Hormuz closed to ships headed toward ports of the United States, Israel and allies. On September 1 the United States Central Command announced the start of a new series of attacks against Revolutionary Guards targets in Iran, presenting them as a response to attempts to strike commercial traffic in the strait and American military personnel in the region. The list of targets released by CENTCOM includes air defense sites, radar, mine-laying capabilities, anti-ship missile launchers and attack drones: the account is reported by Axios and, via Reuters, by Military Times. That same day the British center UKMTO reported that a Saudi tanker and a South Korean tanker had been struck a few minutes apart while transiting the strait, as reported by the Washington Times.

The scale of the standoff lies in two percentages referring to the situation before the war: about 25% of the world’s maritime oil trade and 20% of liquefied natural gas passed through Hormuz. It is on that share that the most explicit Iranian threat rests: parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, quoted by Iranian media, argued that if Iran is prevented from exporting crude oil from the Persian Gulf, no one will be able to export it either.

The market translates the threat into figures. On September 10 Brent futures rose 2.78% to $104.41 a barrel according to Forbes Advisor; at 8 a.m. New York time the international benchmark was quoted at $105.20, up $3.15 from the previous day and about $37.30 above the level of a year earlier, according to the reading by Fortune. On September 9 Brent had surpassed $100 for the first time since May. In the September 10 dispatch picked up by ANSA, Saudi production was reported to have fallen to its lowest level since 1990, with the barrel close to $105.

What we do not know. Which bases were struck in Jordan and the Gulf, with what effects and with what, if any, casualties: none of these elements appear in today’s material. We do not know how many of the ships named in the claim were actually hit, nor what the American assessment is: no communication from Central Command subsequent to the one on September 1 appears in the available documentation. We do not even know the material effects of the attacks announced that day by CENTCOM.

One verifiable fact remains that does not depend on the claims: the European crude oil benchmark has been above one hundred dollars a barrel since September 9, and for operators cited in market readings the escalation between the United States and Iran is the foremost factor at play, together with a 0.3 million barrel decline in American stockpiles.