The US Central Command (CENTCOM) has shared footage of Iranian drone carrier IRIS Shahid Bagheri being set ablaze by a weapons strike.
In a 6 March post on social media, grainy surveillance footage shows the vessel apparently undamaged in calm waters before a massive explosion from the middle of the ship.
The weapon used to inflict the damage was not clear. In a subsequent briefing by US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper, Hegseth said that the vessel had been hit and was ablaze.
No drones or helicopters appeared to be on the vessel’s flight deck at the time of the strike. This is the second known attack against Shahid Bagheri: on 2 March, CENTCOM said it had been struck in the early hours of Operation Epic Fury, in a post debunking Iranian claims about the sinking of a US Navy aircraft carrier.
Shahid Bagheri was commissioned in February 2025 and was derived from the South Korean container ship Perarin. The vessel has an angled flightdeck and a ski jump for launching drones.
At the time of the vessel’s commissioning, images showed five helicopters – two Russian Helicopters Mi-171s and three Bell 206s – and five uncrewed aerial vehicles on her flight deck.
U.S. forces aren't holding back on the mission to sink the entire Iranian Navy. Today, an Iranian drone carrier, roughly the size of a WWII aircraft carrier, was struck and is now on fire. pic.twitter.com/WyA4fniZck
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 6, 2026
During the briefing, Hegseth repeated his view that the US military suffers from no shortage of munitions to continue prosecuting Iranian targets.
“Our stockpiles of defensive and offensive weapons allow us to sustain this campaign as long as we need to,” says Hegseth, stressing that the US military power arrayed against Iran will continue to grow.
Cooper, for his part, says that American bombers have struck nearly 100 targets “deep inside Iran” over the last 72h, including targets near Tehran. This includes 907kg (2,000lb) penetrator bombs targeting ballistic missiles hidden in underground shelters.
Cooper adds that Iran’s ballistic missile strikes against neighbors have declined 83% since the first day of the war on 28 February. The US is also striking Iran’s industrial capability to produce ballistic missiles, and has sunk or destroyed up to 30 Iranian ships.
Separately, the Israel Defense Forces – which dubs its participation Roaring Lion – confirms that strikes continue against Iran’s terrorist affiliate in Lebanon, Hezbollah.
More broadly, Israel’s air force has flown over 7,000h since the start of combat operations, hitting “750+” targets in Tehran. Targets include missile launchers, “terrorist infrastructure”, and Iranian leadership.
In a social media video overlaid with the soundtrack from the film Star Wars, Israel showed footage of an Iranian Yakovlev Yak-130 being downed by a Lockheed Martin F-35I fighter.
