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U.S. forces struck an Iranian aircraft carrier for drones in the first hours of the war on Feb. 28, U.S. Central Command said on March 2, making the IRIS Shahid Bagheri one of the most high-profile targets acknowledged so far.
Central Command announced the strike in a social media post that disputed “false messaging” by Iran that a U.S. aircraft carrier had been sunk.
“The only carrier that has been hit is the Shahid Bagheri, an Iranian drone carrier. U.S. forces struck the ship within hours of launching Operation Epic Fury,” the Central Command post on X.com says.
The statement makes the Shahid Bagheri the only named target among nine Iranian naval vessels struck so far by U.S. forces, Central Command said.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) navy created the Shahid Bagheri by converting the former Perarin container ship.
“With a length of 787 feet and a takeoff runway of approximately 570 feet, the Shahid Bagheri is well-equipped to support a variety of Iranian drones, including loitering munitions,” Can Kasapglu, a nonresident senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, wrote in a year-old analysis shortly after the IRGC unveiled the converted ship.
Iran has made a practice of converting container ships into IRGC navy vessels. The former Sarvin container ship was converted into a floating missile platform named the IRIS Shahid Mahdavi. The Iranian navy also fields the Makran, a former crude oil tanker, as a helicopter carrier. The Shahid Roudaki also functions as a drone and missile launch platform, having been converted from a container ship, Kasapglu wrote.
On Feb. 28, Central Command posted an image of a U.S. Navy destroyer launching the maritime strike version of the Raytheon Tomahawk anti-ship missile, but did not identify its target. Eliminating the Iranian navy was singled out as one of several main objectives of the operation by President Donald Trump on the same day.
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