Surreal footage from the Strait of Hormuz has gone viral in the past 24 hours: thousands of iPhone boxes and luxury perfume bottles floating across the strategic waterway. The videos, filmed by local fishing boats racing to scoop up the floating cargo, come after the container ship GFS Pride was attacked, caught fire, and sank in the Gulf while en route from the United Arab Emirates.
The cargo ship, flying a Singapore flag and owned by a UAE-based company, was carrying roughly 2,500 containers of goods from Dubai. According to Singapore’s port authority, the vessel was hit by an unidentified projectile or missile, caught fire, and sank about four nautical miles northwest of Oman’s Musandam Peninsula. All 21 crew members were rescued safely with no casualties, but a significant portion of the premium cargo broke open—flooding the strait with sought-after goods that were quickly collected by small boats in the area.
The circumstances of the attack are fiercely disputed between the powers. While international shipping sources reported a missile or explosive drone strike, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed the ship hit a naval mine after deviating into an “unauthorized route” under their control. The Iranians also released photos showing black smoke billowing from the sinking vessel and containers scattered in the water, as part of an effort to demonstrate military control over the waterway through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes.
The incident isn’t isolated—it’s part of an aggressive wave of Iranian attacks on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman, including strikes on other ships like the Cape Dao and GFS Giselle. The attacks intensified particularly after a U.S. military operation that destroyed an Iranian spy ship in the Gulf after it conducted surveillance on American naval vessels.