US Forms Task Force to Cut Iran's Land and Caspian Sea Supply Routes

Task Force Iron Gate, which CENTCOM announced on Saturday, is a 20-member team of civilian and military personnel based in Tampa, Florida. According to CENTCOM, it will coordinate with other US government agencies on "preventing the movement of advanced weapons systems, dual-use technologies, sanctioned materials, and illegal revenue streams across Iran's land borders and the Caspian Sea."

The task force widens Washington's economic campaign against Tehran beyond the sea lanes around the Gulf. The war between the two countries is now in its eighth month. Iran has restricted passage through the Strait of Hormuz, choking global energy supplies, while US forces have blockaded Iranian ports. With the sea routes contested, the land borders and the Caspian are Iran's main remaining channels for trade with its neighbours, and the new unit is aimed squarely at them.

President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the unit was already operating. "Task Force Iron Gate is in full force and effect in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Coupled with history's greatest Naval Blockade, very little gets into, or out of, Iran!" he wrote on Truth Social.

CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper said the task force would reinforce "the success of our ironclad blockade against Iran at sea" and "will further constrain Iran's ability to finance terrorism, rebuild weapons factories, and replenish their military."

The sea blockade has become steadily more forceful. CENTCOM said enforcement since July had led US forces to redirect 147 commercial vessels that complied and to disable five merchant ships that refused. On Saturday, it said, a US military aircraft fired precision munitions at the stern of the St. Kitts-flagged M/V Huda in the Gulf of Oman, disabling the ship after the crew had been told to leave the targeted spaces. In August, Washington announced what it called an "economic asphyxiation" campaign against Iran's economy.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps dismissed the new effort. "The United States will never be able to impose the economic blockade it is pursuing and proposing under various names and through different plans," Guards spokesman Hossein Mohebi said, according to the Fars news agency. He said Washington would be "powerless to block" Iran's links with neighbouring countries.

Michael Mulroy, a former US deputy assistant defence secretary for the Middle East, told Al Jazeera that the task force would work out where "weapons systems are coming in, how they could potentially be cut off" and how "Iran is transporting its energy". If Trump orders an escalation, he said, those routes would probably become targets. "Unlike Operation Epic Fury, which primarily focuses on military targets, I think these targets will be focused on economic and infrastructure targets," Mulroy said.

The fighting has not stopped. Iran's official news agency IRNA reported explosions on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz and in Jask, Sirik and Bandar Abbas on Saturday. The IRGC Navy also said that two more oil tankers had struck mines near the strait. Trump confirmed new strikes on Qeshm Island a day earlier but called them "minor". He said Tehran still wants a deal, and talks mediated by Qatar are continuing.