A small oil tanker from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) traveling through the Strait of Hormuz entered Iranian waters and turned off its tracker three days ago, leading the US to suspect Iran seized the vessel amid heightened tensions in the region.
The Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) yesterday quoted Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Abbas Mousavi as saying that the Islamic Republic had aided a foreign oil tanker with a malfunction, but the report did not explain further.
Oil tankers have previously been targeted in the wider region amid tensions between the US and Iran over its unraveling nuclear deal with world powers.
The Panamanian-flagged Riah turned off its transponder late on Saturday, but an Emirati official said it sent no distress call.
The Iranian comments did little to clarify exactly what happened to the Riah.
The vessel was passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the shipping chokepoint between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, two days ago in unexplained circumstances, the Associated Press said.
The news agency said that the US “has suspicions” that Iran took control of the tanker, citing an unidentified defense official.
The disappearance was first reported by CNN, which said that US intelligence increasingly believed that the tanker had been forced into Iranian waters by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but that some Gulf sources suggested that the ship simply broke down and was towed by Iran.
While Iran has been blamed for attacks on merchant shipping in the past few months, it has denied responsibility.
Meanwhile, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday said that his country would retaliate over the seizure of an Iranian supertanker carrying 2.1 million barrels of light crude oil.
The vessel was seized with the help of British Royal Marines earlier this month off Gibraltar over suspicion that it was heading to Syria in breach of EU sanctions, an operation Khamenei called “piracy” in a televised speech.
“God willing, the Islamic Republic and its committed forces will not leave this evil without a response,” he said, without elaborating.
British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Jeremy Hunt on Saturday last week said that Britain would facilitate the release of the ship if Iran could guarantee that the vessel would not breach European sanctions on oil shipments to Syria.
Iran previously has threatened to stop oil tankers passing through the strait, through which 20 percent of all crude oil passes, if it cannot sell its own oil abroad.
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