[1][2] 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 Iran–Iraq War.

[3] 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.

[5] 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.

[3] Initially, Moscow offered to loan Kuwait three Soviet-flagged oil tankers and to protect them with Soviet Navy warships.

A special Pasdaran unit which had spent several weeks practicing for this mission laid a string of nine mines 500 yards (460 m) apart, and then hastened back to Farsi.

Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi called it "an irreparable blow on America's political and military prestige".