U.S. Navy helicopter fired Hellfire missiles into cargo ship Vela Nova enforcing Iran blockade in Gulf of Oman

On August 11, 2026, a U.S. Navy MH-60 helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles into the engine room of the Panama-flagged cargo vessel M/V Vela Nova as it transited the Gulf of Oman, disabling the ship's steering gear. U.S. Central Command said the vessel's civilian crew had ignored repeated warnings from American forces as the ship sailed toward an Iranian port, in violation of the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports that CENTCOM reimposed on July 14, 2026. CENTCOM's statement did not say whether any crew members were injured. In the same post, CENTCOM said that, as of August 11, it had redirected 55 commercial vessels attempting to run the blockade, disabled three non-compliant vessels, and boarded two.

The blockade and the wider campaign against Iran continue without new congressional authorization and after the first-ever bicameral War Powers Resolution Congress passed in June 2026, directing the president to end hostilities with Iran absent a declaration of war or specific authorization. The Vela Nova strike is the third vessel CENTCOM has disabled under the reimposed blockade, following the Curaçao-flagged M/T Belma (on or around July 17) and the Mozambique-flagged M/T Lavine (July 24) — each a distinct enforcement action against a different vessel, crew, and date, and recorded separately in this archive rather than merged into a single entry.

Unlike the June 10, 2026 strike on the oil tanker M/T Settebello, which killed three Indian sailors, CENTCOM's statement on the Vela Nova reported no casualties; the strike disabled steering and propulsion rather than producing confirmed deaths. The use of lethal force to disable a civilian vessel, even without confirmed casualties, follows the same extrajudicial-force pattern as the fatal blockade-enforcement strikes already in the archive, and belongs alongside them under the same ongoing war-powers episode.