NEW: Iranian Navy Chief Who Closed Strait Of Hormuz Eliminated In Airstrike

Israel took out the Iranian naval commander behind the Strait of Hormuz shutdown in a targeted airstrike Thursday, wiping out one of Tehran’s top military figures as tensions keep boiling.

Alireza Tangsiri, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, was killed in a strike on the port city of Bandar Abbas, which sits along the critical waterway, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed.

Tangsiri, 64, had just signed off on Iran’s move to choke off the Strait of Hormuz — a global energy artery that carries roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply. He also vowed to keep it shut under orders from the Islamic Republic’s new leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei.

“In response to the order of the commander-in-chief, we will deliver the harshest blows to the aggressor enemy while maintaining the strategy of closing the Strait of Hormuz,” he had said.

His death marks the latest in a string of high-level hits on Iran’s leadership, following the killings of IRGC spokesman Ali Mohammad Naini, regime power player Ali Larijani, and internal security enforcer Gholamreza Soleimani.

Alireza Tangsiri, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (Tasnim News)

Tehran is now threatening to widen the fight beyond Hormuz.

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Iranian officials warned they could move to disrupt the Bab al-Mandeb Strait — another key chokepoint that links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and handles about 12% of global oil shipments — if U.S. forces push deeper into Iranian territory, including Kharg Island, which accounts for about 90% of the country’s crude exports.

“If the enemy wants to take action on land in the Iranian islands or anywhere else in our lands or to inflict costs on Iran with naval movements in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman,” Iran’s Tasnim News Agency reported, citing IRGC sources.

“We will open other fronts for them as a surprise so that their action will not only be of no benefit to them but will also double their costs.

“The Bab al-Mandab Strait is considered one of the world’s strategic straits, and Iran has both the will and the ability to create a completely credible threat against it.”

The warning came after President Trump said U.S. Central Command “executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island.”

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