Tehran suspects Israel and US behind fuel cyber attack: US flies bomber over Middle East in show of force to Iran

Washington: A US Air Force bomber escorted by fighter jets from allies including Israel has flown over key waterways in the Middle East where American and Iranian naval vessels have faced off.

The B-1B Lancer passed over the Gulf, Bab al-Mandeb Strait, Suez Canal and Gulf of Oman, the US Central Command, or Centcom, said in a statement on Sunday. It also flew over the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for a fifth of world oil output at the head of the Gulf that Iran considers a strategic area of influence.

"The bomber task force mission... was intended to deliver a clear message of reassurance," Centcom said. Fighter jets from Israel, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, all US allies opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran, escorted the US bomber over their respective airspaces.

"Military readiness for any contingency or mission -- from crisis response to multilateral exercises to one-day presence patrols like this -- depend on reliable partnerships," said Centcom commander General Frank McKenzie, the head of US forces in the Middle East. Egyptian fighter jets also accompanied the B-1B, a supersonic bomber that can carry the heaviest conventional payload of all the US military’s planes.

In January, a US B-52 bomber, also capable of carrying nuclear weapons, flew over the Middle East. Since February, Iran and Israel have been accused of engaging in what analysts have called a "shadow war", in which vessels linked to each nation have come under attack in waters around the Gulf in tit-for-tat exchanges.

The regional patrol, Centcom’s fifth such operation this year, comes as talks aimed at reviving the 2015 deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program have stalled. US President Joe Biden has repeatedly offered to return to the nuclear accord, but his administration has voiced growing frustration over delays after a hardline government took office in Iran.

Then-president Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018 and imposed sweeping sanctions, leading Iran to step up contested nuclear work in retaliation. Meanwhile, an Iranian general has said Israel and the United States were likely to have been behind a cyber attack that interrupted the distribution of fuel at service stations.

Tuesday’s attack "technically" resembles two previous incidents whose perpetrators "were unquestionably our enemies, namely the United States and the Zionist regime", the Revolutionary Guards’ Gholamreza Jalali said.

"We have analysed two incidents, the railway accident and the Shahid Rajaei port accident, and we found that they were similar," Jalali, who heads a civil defence unit responsible for cyber activity, told state television late Saturday. In July, Iran’s transportation ministry said a "cyber disruption" had affected its computer systems and website, according to Fars news agency.

And in May last year, the Washington Post reported that Israel carried out a cyber attack on the Iranian port of Shahid Rajaei in the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic route for global oil shipments.

Tuesday’s cyber attack caused traffic jams on major arteries in Tehran, where long queues at petrol stations disrupted the flow of traffic. The oil ministry later took service stations offline so that petrol could be distributed manually, according to the authorities.