US forces destroyed a surveillance tower along Iran's Gulf of Oman coastline, part of a surveillance network used for decades by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to track and target commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, US Central Command (CENTCOM) stated on Friday in a post to Twitter/X. 

According to CENTCOM, the tower's destruction "directly degrades IRGC's ability to coordinate attacks on innocent civilian crew members." 

The strike on the Chah Bahar Shahid Kalantari Port surveillance tower came as part of the US's most recent wave of strikes against Iran conducted early Friday morning.

US forces operating in the Strait of Hormuz, July 17, 2026.
US forces operating in the Strait of Hormuz, July 17, 2026. (credit: Screenshot/X/@PeteHegseth)

US denies soldiers captured, killed in attack on special ops center in Syria

The US also denied the IRGC's claim that they had attacked a US special operations command center and captured or killed US soldiers at al-Tanf in Syria in retaliation for the strikes. 

"Fact: No US troops in the region have recently been killed or captured," CENTCOM wrote in a post.