The U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations against Iran, said on the 17th (local time) that it destroyed a surveillance tower at a port that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had used to track and attack civilian vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. Central Command said on X (formerly Twitter) the same day, "On July 16, U.S. forces successfully destroyed the surveillance tower at Chabahar's Shahid Kalantari port, part of a maritime monitoring network built along Iran's coast on the Gulf of Oman," conveying this information.
The surveillance tower is known to have been used by the IRGC for decades to track and target merchant ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Chabahar port is Iran's only port that opens directly to the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Central Command said the strike "directly degraded the IRGC's ability to coordinate attacks on innocent civilian mariners," and added that "this airstrike protects freedom of navigation for all vessels in the regional waters, except for ships that seek to violate the U.S. maritime blockade against Iran."