A suspected drone has struck a US-owned floating liquefied natural gas facility at Egypt’s Mediterranean port of Damietta, setting two vessels ablaze and prompting President Donald Trump to threaten retaliation against Iran.
British maritime security firm Ambrey assessed that at least one drone had hit the Energos Winter, a floating storage and regasification unit moored at the port on Wednesday. Maritime risk group Vanguard separately said an unidentified projectile struck the vessel’s starboard side.
The resulting fire reportedly spread to the nearby LNG carrier GasLog Salem. Crew members were evacuated, both vessels were moved outside the port as a precaution, and firefighters brought the blaze under control. No casualties were reported.
The Energos Winter can store 138,250 cubic metres of LNG and deliver up to 650 million cubic feet of gas per day into Egypt’s energy network. Its US-based owner, Energos Infrastructure, operates four floating LNG facilities in the country that collectively supply around 35% of Egypt’s natural-gas demand.
No group has claimed responsibility for the incident, and neither Egyptian authorities nor the maritime-security firms publicly attributed it to Iran.
President Trump, however, told reporters that he had been briefed on the incident, describing it as “a little more of the same,” before signaling that US retaliation against Tehran was imminent.
“We’re going to be hitting them very hard because it’s our turn to hit them,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday. “They know it’s coming. They’re asking us not to do it.”
Trump had issued an even more explicit threat earlier in the day after Iran launched several ballistic missiles at US forces in Jordan.
“We’re going to beat the f***ing s**t out of them,” Trump reportedly told Fox News, adding: “We’ll be hitting them hard. They’re going to get a beating.”
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed that its Aerospace Force had targeted a US air base and what it described as CENTCOM’s headquarters in Jordan. US Central Command called it an attempted “surprise attack” and claimed that all the incoming missiles had been intercepted.
Trump said Iran had fired five missiles and credited US Patriot systems with destroying them. “It’s our turn,” he said, while suggesting that diplomatic negotiations could eventually resume after the threatened retaliation.
The renewed hostilities came days after Trump suspended a 13-night US bombing campaign to allow negotiations with Tehran to proceed. The fragile pause has since unraveled, with the US tightening its blockade of Iranian ports and threatening to seize Iranian funds frozen abroad – moves that Tehran considers clear violations of the agreements reached so far.