A motorboat cruises along the shore off the town of Al Jeer on the Strait of Hormuz in the northern emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, with a tanker seen in the background. AFP
The incident took place as Iran exchanged strikes with the United States and Israel, who launched an attack Saturday that killed the Islamic republic's supreme leader along with 200 civilians.
"The fate of the offending oil tanker that was struck while attempting to illegally pass through the Strait of Hormuz is that it is now sinking," state TV reported, without elaborating.
It carried footage showing heavy black smoke emanating from the burning tanker at sea.
The strait carries a quarter of the world's seaborne oil and a fifth of all liquified natural gas.
Two major shipping groups on Saturday suspended navigation through the Gulf as conflict flared between the United States, Israel and Iran, piling onto a growing maritime slowdown in the region.
The announcements came as Iran's Revolutionary Guards had warned several ships that the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway for oil from the Gulf, was "basically closed", Iran's Tasnim news agency reported.
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