Iran said it launched strikes on ships near the Strait of Hormuz and attacked American forces in Jordan on Wednesday after the US said it destroyed five Iranian tankers, in a sharp escalation of the regional war.The US Central Command said it “destroyed five Iranian crude oil carriers” overnight after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps made two unsuccessful attempts to hit a US Navy warship with ballistic missiles.The IRGC later said on its Telegram channel that it inflicted “extensive damage” to two US warships, eight oil tankers and 10 other vessels, without providing details.The US military denied its ships were hit.An oil products tanker at anchor north of Dubai and a fuel storage tanker in Iraq’s waters were damaged in apparent drone strikes, Iraqi authorities and shipping agencies said.Iraqi officials said the Panama-flagged New Andros, which was carrying two million barrels of fuel oil, was struck by an “unknown object” at 5.30am while inside Iraqi territorial waters.The ship sustained damage to its hull but no casualties were reported and there was no oil spill, authorities said.One crew member was killed and another is missing after a separate incident involving ⁠the Gibraltar-flagged oil products tanker Hercules ⁠Star, the vessel’s charterer ⁠Peninsula said.“All other crew members ⁠are accounted for,” it added.Initial assessments by maritime security sources suggest the vessel may have been hit by a drone. The UKMTO agency said the ship was 44km off the coast when it was struck, outside UAE waters.Play00:33Iranian attack leaves hole in tanker off Iraq coastThe attacks, which caused the Brent crude price to breach the $100 a barrel mark for the first time since July, came after the IRGC issued a threat against tankers near Bahraini and Kuwaiti ports, “whether they are at anchor or berthed”.While Tehran has repeatedly launched attacks on commercial ships during the war, these were largely directed at vessels attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.'Highly fluid situation'Capt Farhad Patel, director of the Sharaf Shipping Agency in Dubai, said the latest attacks represented a serious escalation and that the situation for commercial shipping was “extremely serious and highly fluid”.“What is particularly concerning is that merchant vessels are increasingly being caught directly in the conflict, and the geographical spread of incidents across the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman is widening,” he told The National.“The next few days will be critical in determining whether this remains a period of heightened disruption or develops into a much broader interruption of commercial shipping through the Gulf.”Claudio Galimberti, chief economist at consultancy Rystad Energy, said that flows of oil through the strait had dropped to as low as two million barrels a day, having reached up to nine million in the week before attacks resumed on August 30.US President Donald Trump approved a policy of “tanker-for-tanker” attacks. The US military said it had destroyed 10 Iranian tankers since then.Iran says it targeted two US vessels, eight oil tankers and 10 other ships in the Gulf. AFPShow caption: Iran says it targeted two US vessels, eight oil tankers and …Centcom, which oversees US military operations in the Middle East, said the tankers were part of a shadow network funding the IRGC and its proxy forces, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iraqi militias and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.“Iran continues to try to hit US naval ships, and for every time they do that or try to do that, they’re going to lose tankers,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.Jordan repels Iranian missilesThe IRGC said it responded to the destruction of the tankers with a ballistic missile attack on US F-35, F-16 and F-15 jets at Al Azraq airbase in Jordan.The kingdom’s armed forces said it faced an attack launched from Iranian territory, with air defence systems engaging 20 ballistic missiles.“Eighteen missiles were successfully intercepted and destroyed”, while two fell in unpopulated areas, an armed forces spokesman said. No casualties were reported.The IRGC said it would sharply escalate their response to any further attacks.It added that Iran would release a map of an expanded maritime zone off limits to ships that extends as far east as the port city of Chabahar, near ⁠Pakistan.The escalation followed Houthi missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, in which the Iran-backed group struck an airbase in Khamis Mushait, as well as state oil company sites in Abha, Najran and Jazan.