Iran says it destroyed a radar in Bahrain; CENTCOM says it shot down two drones

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement carried by IRNA on Friday 13 November that it had destroyed a US early-warning radar system in Bahrain, framing the operation as retaliation for a US strike on a telecommunications pole in the southern Iranian port town of Sirik, near the Strait of Hormuz, on Thursday 12 November, and as a warning to Washington to halt its strikes. US Central Command denied it. CENTCOM said US forces intercepted two Iranian attack drones headed toward Bahrain and that there were no injuries and no damage. The Associated Press reported that the claim could not be independently verified, and noted it was the first such Iranian claim against Bahrain in months. Bahrain hosts the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

The maritime claims from the same 48 hours rest on the same single source. The IRGC Navy said via Iranian state media on Friday that a gas tanker struck a naval mine and exploded in the eastern part of the Strait of Hormuz while using what the Guard called an “unauthorised and dangerous route”, having ignored repeated warnings. No vessel name, IMO number or flag was given. Reuters described the cargo as liquefied natural gas; AP, working from IRNA, called it a liquefied petroleum gas tanker — the kind of divergence that usually means neither wire has the ship and both are translating the same Persian statement. AP and NewsNation both recorded that UKMTO, the British military agency that monitors maritime incidents, had issued no report. Reuters separately noted Iranian media claims on Thursday that four oil tankers were hit by explosions in the strait.

The independently sourced numbers are older and broader. The International Maritime Organization has confirmed 130 incidents in the region, most of them attacks, since the conflict began in late February 2026, with at least 25 seafarers killed, according to the Jerusalem Post on 10 November. Bloomberg reported the same day that Bahri, Saudi Arabia’s main shipping firm, is sending some tankers through Hormuz in coordination with the US military, with Saudi exports close to prewar levels — a quiet indicator that the strait is degraded rather than closed. Al Jazeera, citing Iranian forces' own count, reported at least five tankers damaged plus a tugboat afire as of 5 November.

Assessment: Read the two statements precisely: the Guard claims a destroyed radar, CENTCOM answers about two drones. Those are not the same proposition, and neither side has produced evidence for its version. That asymmetry suits both. Tehran gets a deterrent signal against the Fifth Fleet’s host without having to achieve anything; Washington gets to report a clean intercept without confirming what was targeted. The same problem runs through the shipping file — every tanker casualty of the past 72 hours traces back to the IRGC Navy via state media while UKMTO stays silent. Either the monitoring agency is not reporting or some of these incidents are not happening as described. Resist aggregating the counts; the wire and liveblog entries overlap and no one has reconciled them.