The Bridgeton incident was the mining of the supertanker SS Bridgeton by Iranian IRGC navy near Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf on July 24, 1987. The ship was sailing in the first convoy of Operation Earnest Will, the U.S. response to Kuwaiti requests to protect its tankers from attack amid the IranIraq War.The explosion of an Iranian mine in the Gulf's shipping channel damaged Bridgeton's outer hull but did not prevent it from completing its voyage. Nevertheless, the incident was a propaganda victory for Iran. The captain of the ship complained about the information given to the press, by United States politicians following a meeting with President Reagan, and the fact that four warships and a carrier group could not prevent Iran from placing a small minefield in the supposedly secret, but compromised, route of the tanker.



MV Bridgeton, ex-al-Rekkah, was a Kuwait Oil Company oil tanker that was reflagged to a U.S flag and renamed during Operation Earnest Will. The ship was built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in its Nagasaki shipyard and launched August 14, 1976. Bridgeton was part of the first Earnest Will convoy when it struck an Iranian mine near Farsi Island resulting in a major propaganda victory for the Iranians. In the late 1990s, Bridgeton transferred to Panamanian registry and was renamed Pacific Blue. It was scrapped in 2002 at Haryana Ship Demolition in Alang, India.