IRANIAN NAVY SEIZES OIL TANKER OFF OMAN

Iran’s navy said it had seized a tanker loaded with crude oil off the coast of Oman on Thursday, apparently in retaliation for the United States confiscating oil from the same ship last year.

A British government maritime agency said the ship was reportedly boarded by four or five armed people wearing uniforms and black masks. Iranian forces said the boarders arrived by helicopter, and released video that they said showed the men descending from a craft hovering above the ship’s deck.

The U.S. government diverted the same vessel last year and confiscated its cargo, Iranian oil that was being transported in violation of U.S. sanctions. The ship, then called the Suez Rajan, was later renamed the St. Nikolas.

The Iranian navy claimed on Thursday in a statement that the tanker “stole Iran’s oil under the order of the U.S. and transported it to American shores,” and said it had impounded the ship with an order from the Iranian judiciary.

Iran claimed that the ship was American, but the St. Nikolas is registered in the Marshall Islands, and the company that operates it, Empire Navigation, said it was not American. U.S. court documents state the ship is leased by a Marshall Islands company, and that Empire is also incorporated there, and operates in Greece.

The ship was taken to Bandar Jask, a small Iranian port on the Sea of Oman, where the crew — 18 Filipino nationals and one Greek national, Empire said — will remain on board, according to an official from Iran’s Oil Ministry, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. Empire said the tanker was carrying about 1 million barrels of Iraqi crude oil and was headed for Turkey.

Iran plans to hold the ship and the crew until Iran is repaid for a similar amount of oil — valued at about $75 million at current prices — that the United States seized from it last year, according to the Oil Ministry official and an Iranbased oil dealer who works with the ministry and was also not authorized to speak publicly. The official said Iran sees the U.S. confiscation as theft.

Iran has seized tankers before, and declared last summer that it would retaliate for the American taking of the Suez Rajan. But the seizure of the St. Nikolas by Iran comes at a particularly sensitive time, just as the United States and its allies, including Israel, are confronting Iranian-backed militias in the Red Sea, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria and in Iraq.

The Iranian Oil Ministry official said the navy had carried out the raid, rather than the Revolutionary Guard, and had emphasized the judicial order — it was unclear from what court — to minimize resulting tensions with the United States.

The message, the official said, is that Iran sees its actions as commercial rather than political, and wants to be repaid and to deter further seizures of its oil.

The Pentagon spokesperson, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, called on Iran “to release the tanker and the crew immediately.”