The Iranian navy on Thursday seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman heading to the US amid wider tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program, the latest such capture in a waterway crucial for global energy supplies.
The US Navy’s Middle East-based 5th Fleet identified the vessel as the Advantage Sweet. Satellite tracking data for the vessel from MarineTraffic.com showed it in the Gulf of Oman, just north Muscat, on Thursday afternoon. It had just departed from Kuwait and listed its destination as Houston.
The Advantage Sweet issued a distress call at 1:15pm while in international waters as Iran seized the vessel, the navy said.
Photo: Reuters
“Iran’s actions are contrary to international law and disruptive to regional security and stability,” the 5th Fleet said in a statement. “Iran should immediately release the oil tanker.”
The US Navy initially said Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard seized the vessel, but a US naval aircraft later confirmed that the Iranian Navy captured the ship, 5th Fleet spokesman Cmdr. Timothy Hawkins said.
Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency said the seizure came after an “unknown ship collided with an Iranian vessel last night in the Persian Gulf, causing several Iranian crew members to go missing and get injured.”
It did not identify the other ship involved in the alleged collision.
The Advantage Sweet had been in the Persian Gulf on Wednesday, but its track showed no unusual behavior as it transited through the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of all traded oil passes.
Iran has made unsubstantiated allegations in other ship seizures to leverage the capture as leverage to negotiate with foreign nations.
Iran’s “harassing activity within the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman is commensurate with an established pattern of behavior that has seen Iran target vessels as a result of ongoing disputes,” maritime security firm Dryad Global said.
The 5th Fleet said the Iranian seizure was at least the fifth commercial vessel taken by Tehran in the past two years.
“Iran’s continued harassment of vessels and interference with navigational rights in regional waters are a threat to maritime security and the global economy,” it added.
US Army General Erik Kurilla, the top US commander for the Middle East, said in a statement that the “illegal seizure” was “another in a continuing series of violations by Iran of the international rules-based order.”
The vessel’s manager, a Turkish firm called Advantage Tankers, issued a statement acknowledging the Advantage Sweet was “being escorted by the Iranian navy to a port on the basis of an international dispute.”
All 24 crew members are Indian. The ship’s listed owner appeared to be a Chinese company.
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