IRGC Navy Commander says they are waiting for American ships to approach the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz so can sink them; counting down the days until this happens, reports Tasnim

Rhetoric of this kind from IRGC naval commanders, carried via semi-official domestic agencies, is a recurring feature of the Iran-US standoff and has historically been aimed at domestic audiences and deterrence signalling rather than telegraphing imminent action. Episodes of explicit Hormuz threats have tended to follow a familiar sequence: crude reprices a geopolitical risk premium, tanker rates and war-risk insurance on Gulf transit firm, and the market then fades the move in the absence of an actual kinetic event, since a closure attempt would cut against Iran's own export lifeline and its main buyer relationships. The operative distinction is between threats of sinking approaching vessels, a conditional formulation that functions as a warning shot, and any actual harassment, seizure, or mining, which is the threshold that has repriced freight and front-month spreads durably in past episodes. The actors matter: IRGC navy statements carry more weight than generalist political bluster given the corps' control of the Gulf's asymmetric naval assets, but its track record is harassment and seizures rather than direct attacks on US warships, which it has historically avoided. The tells are follow-on movement of US naval assets into or out of the Gulf, any change in tanker routing or insurance terms, and whether parallel channels of US-Iran diplomacy are active or dormant.