Claim and counter claim are flying between Washington and Tehran about what happened during the 48 hours that Operation Project Freedom was in effect. Iranian state media claims it used a sophisticated anti-radar missile to blind three US warships that sustained significant damage. The US CENTCON claims no damage was done.

There is little doubt that three US Navy destroyers were attacked by Iranian forces in the Strait of Hormuz on the night of May 7 as the Trump administration attempted to escort tankers through the narrow waterway and force the reopening of the strategic waterway.

US Central Command confirmed that Iranian forces launched multiple missiles, drones and small boats as USS Truxtun (DDG 103), USS Rafael Peralta (DDG 115) and USS Mason (DDG 87) transited the international sea passage toward the Gulf of Oman.

"No US assets were struck," CENTCOM said, adding that US forces had "eliminated inbound threats and targeted Iranian military facilities responsible for attacking US forces including missile and drone launch sites, command and control locations and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance nodes."

However, according to Iranian state media and military sources, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) deployed never-seen-before in action “anti-radiation” missiles — weapons specifically designed to detect, lock-in on and destroy radar systems by homing in on the electromagnetic emissions they produce. Iranian sources claim all three ships were blinded after their radar systems were destroyed by the missiles, with one vessel suffering significant fire damage. The claims have not been verified by any independent source.

The anti-radiation missiles have not reportedly been used before, but Iran is known to have developed an entire class of sophisticated and deadly anti-ship missiles against which the US has few defences, reports bne IntelliNews’ military analyst Patricia Marins. Moreover, as IntelliNews has reported, Iran has rolled out several other sophisticated munitions in this asymmetric war and has been cooperating with China and Russia as part of an emerging CRINK military alliance that also includes North Korea.

What anti-radiation missiles do

If the existence of Iran’s anti-radiation missiles is confirmed, they would represent a serious technological breakthrough and a major headache for US warships in the region.

Anti-radiation missiles — also known as anti-radar missiles or ARMs — are a specialised category of weapon that operates on a fundamentally different targeting principle from conventional missiles. Rather than using their own active radar seeker to find a target, they are entirely passive: they detect and home in on radio frequency emissions from enemy radar systems. This makes them particularly effective against ships that are actively scanning with their radar arrays, as warships routinely do in contested waters.

The weapon has an important characteristic known as "target memory" or "home-on-jam" capability — if the targeted radar is switched off to break the missile's lock, the weapon retains the last known bearing and position and continues toward it. This forces radar operators into an impossible choice: continue radiating and risk destruction, or go dark and lose situational awareness at the moment it is most needed.

The United States, Russia and China have the most advanced anti-radiation missile capabilities globally, with systems including the HARM (High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile) family and its successor, the AARGM-ER. Israel, France, Germany, Sweden and several other Nato countries also possess significant ARM capabilities, but the missile is not widely deployed amongst Nato members.

However, the claims of their use is creditable as Iran's domestic ARM programme is documented. The Kowsar air-to-surface ARM and the more advanced Harir have been displayed at Iranian military exhibitions and are believed to be operationally deployed. Iranian military doctrine has long emphasised the electronic warfare and radar-suppression mission as central to any conflict with a technologically superior adversary — exactly the scenario that played out on the night of May 7 and a clash that Tehran has been anticipating for decades.

The information war

Trump called the May 7 skirmish strikes a "love tap" in a phone call with ABC News, insisting: "The ceasefire is going. It's in effect." The framing is consistent with the administration's effort to maintain the fiction of a ceasefire while conducting active military operations — a position that has required increasing Doublethink by the Trump administration as it tries to marry political needs with operational realities.

Iran's detailed technical briefing on the missile type also serves dual masters: demonstrating to domestic and international audiences that Iran's armed forces are conducting sophisticated, capability-degrading operations against the world's most advanced navy, rather than simply firing missiles that are being intercepted. Whether the radar destruction claims are accurate is impossible to verify independently: the US Navy has every incentive to deny damage, and Iran has every incentive to claim it.

But punters are betting the missiles are real. Odds for the normalisation of maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz on the news betting site Polymarket dropped from 77% to 61% by May 31 following the May 8 attack, according to prediction market data — a measure of how the engagement has been interpreted by those with money on the outcome.

The USS Truxtun, USS Rafael Peralta and USS Mason are part of a larger US Navy deployment that includes more than ten Arleigh Burke-class destroyers operating in the area, providing ballistic missile defence, air defence and surface warfare capabilities, while also retaining significant offensive reach through Tomahawk cruise missiles. Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are among the most capable air defence platforms ever built, equipped with the Aegis combat system and SPY-1 radar array — precisely the kind of high-value electromagnetic emitter that an anti-radiation missile is designed to target.

Even if the deployment of ARMS remains controversial, what is clear is that Iran deployed a combination of missiles, drones and fast-attack boats in a coordinated multi-vector assault against three of the US Navy's most capable surface combatants, in a waterway that Washington has been trying to reopen for two months. And the basic strategy remains the same: the most basic missile or drone can penetrate the US destroyers defences if you fire enough of them in one go. The strait remains closed.