US denies Iranian account of attempted oil tanker capture
Claims by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) that they thwarted a US attempt to capture Iranian oil on a tanker in the Sea of Oman are untrue, US officials have said.
According to reports in Iranian media – released on the eve of the anniversary of the Iranian seizure of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 – the US navy interdicted an Iranian oil tanker on 25 October and intended to transfer the oil to a second tanker, but the the IRGC navy intervened by boarding and taking control of the first tanker.
“With the timely and authoritative action of the Guards’ naval forces, the US terrorist navy’s operation to steal Iranian oil in the Sea of Oman failed,” the elite unit said in a statement published by Iranian state media.
US officials said the Iranian account was untrue and there had been no American attempt to seize a tanker. The officials said that in reality Iranian forces had seized a Vietnamese-flagged oil tanker last month and two US navy ships, backed by air support, had monitored the situation, but did not try to interdict the vessel. The tanker was named as Southys, and one of the US destroyers as USS The Sullivans.
The US said they watched Iranian forces “swarming, boarding and seizing the vessel and take it to Iranian waters.”
If the American account is true, it is unclear why the Iranians would seek to board a vessel taking Iranian oil for export clandestinely towards Asia. Some Iranian social media accounts claimed Iran was seeking vengeance on the ship’s captain for previously cooperating with the US over clandestine Iranian oil exports.
Iran is under US sanctions that forbid it from exporting oil to anywhere other than Iraq, although in practice the sanctions regime has regularly been circumvented.
The Iranian reports, which painted the IRGC in a heroic light, may have been timed to coincide with the embassy seizure anniversary – an event marked by state-sponsored demonstrations. An eight-minute video posted by the Guards showed masked gunmen from the IRGC landing on the deck of a ship by helicopter as dramatic music played.
At a minimum, the alleged episode underlines the instability in the Gulf and the chance of a conflagration if the oil embargo continues and is heavily policed by the US.
Iran is on the cusp of announcing the date on which it is due to return to talks in Vienna over the future of the nuclear deal it signed with the US, EU and others in 2015. Some hard line websites in Iran said the announcement might come late on Wednesday. Donald Trump took the US out of the deal and started imposing sanctions on Iranian oil exports in 2018. Iran responded by dropping some of its commitments to the deal and increasing uranium enrichment.
Iran has been under intense pressure from Russia, a natural ally, to stop delaying the return to the talks. Powerful elements in Iranian politics do not want the talks to restart, seeing them as a blind alley. They believe Iran can withstand further US sanctions, build up trade with the east and develop its own nuclear programme free from UN inspectors.
In a tweet on Sunday the chair of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Masoud Khansari, said Iran’s oil exports to China had “drastically dropped” in the first seven months of the current Iranian calendar year, which began on 21 March. According to Khansari, in the first seven months of 2021 Iran exported just $11m of crude oil to China, compared with $9.5bn in 2018.
Iran says its use of middlemen in oil exports means it is not falling foul of the sanctions regime.
The head of the UN nuclear inspectorate, Rafael Grossi, has admitted that restrictions on the work of his inspectors by Iran at its nuclear sites mean his staff are now operating under a dense cloud.
In an attempt to unlock the talks, Joe Biden has given an undertaking to rejoin the 2015 deal if Iran stays in compliance. Biden met Boris Johnson, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron at the G20 summit on Saturday to discuss the matter.
The four leaders urged the Iranian president to seize the opportunityto prevent a “dangerous escalation”. In a statement, they said: “This will only be possible if Iran changes direction. We urge President [Ebrahim] Raisi to seize this opportunity and act in good faith so that negotiations can urgently find an outcome. It’s the only safe way to prevent a dangerous escalation that would be in no country’s interest.”