Global Courant 2023-04-27 18:32:29
Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday amid heightened tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program, the US Navy said.
The Navy’s Middle East-based 5th Fleet identified the ship as the Advantage Sweet. Satellite tracking data for the ship from MarineTraffic.com showed it Thursday afternoon in the Gulf of Oman, just north of Oman’s capital, Muscat. It had just arrived from Kuwait and listed Houston, Texas as its destination.
The Advantage Sweet sent out a distress call at 1:15 p.m. while in international waters when Iran seized the ship, the Navy said.
“Iran’s actions violate international law and disrupt regional security and stability,” the 5th Fleet said in a statement. “Iran must immediately release the oil tanker.”
The 5th Fleet said the Iranian seizure was at least the fifth commercial ship captured by Tehran in the past two years.
“Iran’s continued harassment of ships and interference with navigation rights in regional waters pose a threat to maritime security and the global economy,” it added.
The ship’s manager, a Turkish company, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Iran did not immediately acknowledge the seizure and the Iranian mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Thursday’s seizure by Iran was the latest in a series of hijackings and explosions in a region that includes the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow estuary of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all traded oil passes.
The incidents began after then-President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the United States out of Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers, leading Tehran to drastically limit its uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Also, the US Navy has blamed Iran for a series of limpet mine attacks on ships that damaged tankers in 2019, as well as a deadly drone attack on an Israeli-affiliated oil tanker that killed two European crew members in 2021.
Tehran denies carrying out the attacks, but a wider shadow war between Iran and the West is playing out in the region’s unstable waters. Since 2019, the seizures of Iranian tankers are part of it. The last major seizure came when Iran seized two Greek tankers in May and held them until November.
Talks about the torn nuclear deal with Iran have been at a standstill for a year. Since the collapse of the deal, Iran has been running advanced centrifuges and has a rapidly growing stock of enriched uranium. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has warned that Iran has enriched enough to 60% purity – a small technical step from 90% for weapons. That would be enough for Iran to make multiple nuclear weapons if it chooses to do so.
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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
