Iranian state media has claimed an Iranian commercial vessel was struck in the Strait of Hormuz late Saturday, killing one person, amid an ongoing battle between the US and Iran for control over the crucial energy chokepoint.

The US military and Gulf nations have begun escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz in the daytime, the first such escorts since the short-lived Operation Project Freedom in May. While the US has been protecting ships sailing through the strait in recent months,

The question of how many ships are leaving the Persian Gulf is the latest rhetorical battleground in the Iran war.

Gulf diplomats and Iranian officials will meet without US involvement to discuss an Omani plan for re-opening the Strait of Hormuz to regular tanker traffic.

Earlier, the Qatari-owned Al Jazeera reported that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had shot down a US MQ-1 drone over the Strait of Hormuz.

Impasse comes amid growing Saudi anger with Tehran over Houthi advances and strikes on airbase and pipeline

Commercial tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has expanded to daytime crossings after months in which ships largely traveled through the strategic waterway at night, as U.S. forces widen mine-cleared sections of the central shipping lane.

The Strait of Hormuz doesn't have the pull it did a few months ago. Global interest in the waterway, as measured by the number of Google searches, peaked in April, when oil flows through the waterway were at a trickle and everybody wanted to know why oil prices were suddenly above $100 a barrel.