Israel says it has killed Iran’s navy chief overseeing Strait of Hormuz blockade

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Israel says it has killed the Iranian navy chief overseeing what is a near-total blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Alireza Tangsiri, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) navy, was “directly responsible for the terrorist act of bombing and blocking the Strait of Hormuz”, and has been “blown up”, according to Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz.

He added that a number of other “senior Navy command officials” have also been killed. Iran has not yet commented.

Since the start of the war on 28 February, Israel has assassinated several top Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and security chief Ali Larijani.

Effectively blockading the Strait of Hormuz - the thin waterway between Iran, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman, through which around 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes - has been a key pillar of Iran’s strategy in the war.

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As of last week, daily traffic through the strait was down about 95%.

Oil prices have consequently shot up, placing a direct price of the war on consumers in not only the US and Israel but across the world.

In recent weeks, an X account attributed to Tangsiri and cited by Iranian media has posted frequently about the Hormuz blockade, writing that “no vessel associated with the aggressors against Iran has the right to pass through”.

Tangsiri was appointed as the commander of the Navy in 2018, having previously served as deputy commander since 2010. In 2019, he was sanctioned by the US Treasury along with other IRGC commanders after Iran shot down a US surveillance drone near the strait.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Tangsiri as an individual with “a great deal of blood on his hands” and said his assassination was “yet another example of the co-operation between us and our friend, the United States, toward the common goal of achieving the objectives of the war”.

US Central Command said in a statement Tangsiri’s death “makes the region safer” and that the IRGC’s navy “is on an irreversible decline”. It also called on serving members of the IRGC to abandon their posts and return home “to avoid further risk of unnecessary injury or death”.

Israel’s military said in a statement posted on X that the head of the IRGC Navy’s intelligence directorate, Behnam Rezaei, was also “eliminated”.

Additional reporting by Ghoncheh Habibiazad

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