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03-11-2021
TEHRAN/ MASQAT: Iran says it has thwarted an attempt by the United States navy to seize a tanker in the Sea of Oman carrying its oil, the country’s elite forces said in a statement.
“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,” Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a statement published on Wednesday by Iranian state media.
“The tanker carrying Iran’s oil docked at the port of Bandar Abbas on October 25,” it added.
US officials, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said that the Iranian report was not true and there had been no American attempt to seize a tanker.
The American officials said that in reality Iranian forces had seized a Vietnamese-flagged oil tanker last month and US naval forces were just monitoring the situation.
The development comes amid faltering efforts to revive Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers that would see a lifting of US sanctions on its oil exports. More nuclear talks are expected later this month.
Ali Hashem said that there seems to be “a pattern” related to a “confrontation” that came after Washington pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.
There were “tankers that were set on fire, there were bombs on tankers, there were attempts to seize tankers – so this is not new, it’s just escalating,” Hashem said from the Qatari capital, Doha.
“As for the Iranians and the Americans, there were other incidents before,” he said, referring to previous and similar cases.
Nuclear diplomacy
Negotiations with the remaining parties to the 2015 nuclear deal are scheduled to resume at the end of November.
The administration of US President Joe Biden has warned repeatedly that time is running out to reverse the US withdrawal from the deal ordered by his predecessor Donald Trump.
Washington is not directly participating in the talks but is taking part through European Union intermediaries.
Trump’s abandonment of the agreement and re-imposition of sweeping economic sanctions prompted Iran to suspend many of the commitments it made in return for the lifting of the sanctions.
Western governments issued a joint statement on Saturday expressing “grave” concern over Iran’s production of highly enriched uranium, which they said met “no credible civilian need”.
Iran retorted that the output was “for medical supply and for use as fuel in the Tehran research reactor”, and reiterated its readiness to resume talks – which have been on hold since before President Ebrahim Raisi’s election in June. (Int’l News Desk)
