Iran’s oil tanker captured in Gulf of Oman by Iran’s navy
Iran’s navy captured an oil tanker Thursday in the Gulf of Oman that only months earlier had seen its cargo of Iranian oil seized by the United States over sanctions linked to Tehran’s nuclear program, further escalating the tensions gripping the Mideast’s waterways.
The vessel, previously known as the Suez Rajan, was at the center of a yearlong dispute beginning in 2021, which ultimately saw the U.S. Justice Department take the 1 million barrels of Iranian crude oil on it.
Iran’s state-run television acknowledged the seizure late Thursday afternoon, hours after armed men boarded the ship, linking it to the earlier oil seizure. It said Iran’s navy, rather than its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, conducted the seizure.
The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations described receiving a report from the ship’s security manager of hearing “unknown voices over the phone” alongside with the ship’s captain. It said further efforts to contact the ship had failed and that the men who boarded the vessel wore “black military-style uniforms with black masks.”
The U.S. and its allies also have been seizing Iranian oil cargoes since 2019 to enforce sanctions over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. That has led to a series of attacks in the Mideast attributed to the Islamic Republic, as well as ship seizures by Iranian military and paramilitary forces that threaten global shipping.
The seizure of the St. Nikolas, previously known as the Suez Rajan, comes after weeks of attacks by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels on shipping in the Red Sea, including their largest barrage ever of drones and missiles launched late Tuesday. U.S.-led forces launched retaliatory strikes early Friday.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations told The Associated Press in a statement, “Adhering to the established legal procedures is the most prudent approach for the resolution of this matter.”
From Washington, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel condemned Iran’s seizure of the vessel.
“The Iranian government must immediately release the ship and its crew,” Patel said. “This unlawful seizure of a commercial vessel is just the latest behavior by Iran – or enabled by Iran – aimed at disrupting international commerce.”
Meanwhile, satellite tracking data analyzed by the AP on Thursday showed that an Iranian cargo vessel suspected of being a spying platform in the Red Sea had left the waterway. The data showed the Behshad had transited through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait into the Gulf of Aden.
The Behshad has been in the Red Sea since 2021 off Eritrea’s Dahlak archipelago. It arrived there after Iran removed the Saviz, another suspected spy base in the Red Sea that had suffered damage in an attack that analysts attributed to Israel amid a wider shadow war of ship attacks in the region.