Iran Guards say released seized Vietnamese tanker

TEHRAN: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had released a Vietnamese-flagged oil tanker they seized last month in the Sea of Oman in a tense incident also involving the US Navy.

Releasing the ship ends the latest maritime confrontation in waters near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, at a time when Tehran is preparing to resume talks with major powers aimed at ending a standoff over its nuclear deal.

Iran and its arch enemy the United States gave sharply differing accounts of what happened to the MV Sothys, reportedly carrying 26 crew, in the incident on Oct 24.

Iran’s Guards claimed they thwarted an attempt by a US naval vessel to seize the Sothys carrying Iranian oil.

US defence officials rejected that account and said they took no action as Iran seized the tanker and took it into its territorial waters.

On Wednesday, Sepah News, the official website of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said “the seized Sothys oil tanker was released by court order after it was emptied of oil belonging to the Islamic Republic of Iran in Bandar Abbas”.

The Tanker Trackers website had said earlier that “Iran’s IRGC appears to have now released the Sothys. She is currently empty and underway in a southward direction.

“Though her reported destination is Dubai, her current trajectory is the Gulf of Oman,” the service said overnight, adding that Iran was holding the US$50 million worth of oil which the ship had received in June.

The incident came in the wake of a series of attacks on commercial vessels in the sea lanes serving the Gulf, where a large portion of the world’s oil is produced and shipped.

Iran was blamed for a July 29 drone strike on the tanker MT Mercer Street operated by a London-based firm ultimately owned by Israeli shipping magnate Eyal Ofer.