Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard (IPRG) opened fire Wednesday, April 22, 2026, on a container ship in the Strait of Hormuz, damaging the ship and further raising the stakes as planned ceasefire talks in Pakistan failed to materialise.

The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre said the attack happened around 7:55 a.m in the strait and targeted a container ship.

The UKMTO said a Guard gunboat did not hail the ship before firing.

It said no one was hurt and there was no environmental impact from the attack.

Iran did not immediately acknowledge the assault.

It comes after the U.S. seized an Iranian container ship after shooting it this past weekend and boarded an oil tanker associated with Iran’s oil trade in the Indian Ocean.

The US made good on its threat to board and seize any vessel defying its blockade of Iran’s ports on Sunday, with footage released by the military showing a guided-missile destroyer firing on the Iran-linked M/V Touska, and once it was disabled, Marines rappelling from helicopters onto its deck.

The incident comes after the Trump administration said it expected peace talks with Iran to resume this week in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Iran had vowed to retaliate for the seizure of the merchant ship, and it has not yet officially committed to the talks.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said the guided-missile destroyer USS Spruance warned the Touska repeatedly over a six-hour period, during which time the container ship was steaming in the Arabian Sea toward Bandar Abbas, Iran.

According to MarineTraffic.com, the Touska’s last port of call was Port Klang, Malaysia, on April 12. Before that, it had been going back and forth between the Chinese city of Zhuhai and various Iranian ports.

The ship is owned by the Mosakhar Darya Shipping Co, which has an address in Tehran and is subject to sanctions, according to the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Early on Monday, April 20, 2026,  Iran’s top joint military command said the US had violated a ceasefire reached earlier this month by firing at an Iranian commercial ship that was heading from China to Iran.

“We warn that the armed ⁠forces of the Islamic ⁠Republic of Iran will ⁠soon respond and retaliate against this armed piracy by ‌the US military,” a spokesperson of Khatam al-Anbiya said.