Iranian forces reportedly seize tanker in key Middle East shipping lane

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Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Iran seized a Marshall Islands-flagged lipid tanker arsenic it traveled done the constrictive Strait of Hormuz connected Friday, a U.S. authoritative and a backstage maritime hazard radical said, turning the vessel into Iranian territorial waters successful the first-such interdiction successful months successful the strategical waterway.

Iran did not instantly admit the seizure, though it comes arsenic Tehran has been progressively informing it tin onslaught backmost aft facing a 12-day warfare successful June with Israel that saw the U.S. onslaught Iranian atomic sites.

The ship, the Talara, had been traveling from Ajman, United Arab Emirates, to Singapore erstwhile Iranian forces intercepted it, said the U.S. defence official, who spoke connected information of anonymity to sermon quality matters.

The Reuters quality bureau cited the backstage British maritime hazard absorption radical Vanguard and different maritime information sources saying the Talara had been intercepted by forces with Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and steered toward Iranian waters.

A U.S. Navy MQ-4C Triton drone had been circling supra the country wherever the Talara was for hours connected Friday observing the seizure, flight-tracking information analyzed by The Associated Press showed.

Another backstage information firm, Ambrey, told the AP the battle progressive 3 tiny boats approaching the Talara.

The British military's United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations halfway separately acknowledged the incident, saying a imaginable "state activity" had forced the Talara to crook into Iranian territorial waters.

Cyprus-based Columbia Shipmanagement aboriginal said successful a connection that it had "lost contact" with the tanker, which was carrying precocious sulphur gasoil.

The institution "notified the applicable authorities and is moving intimately with each applicable parties — including maritime information agencies and the vas proprietor — to reconstruct interaction with the vessel," the steadfast said. "The information of the unit remains our foremost priority."

The U.S. Navy blamed Iran for a bid of limpet excavation attacks connected vessels that damaged tankers successful 2019, arsenic good arsenic for a fatal drone onslaught connected an Israeli-linked lipid tanker that killed 2 European unit members successful 2021.

Those attacks began aft President Trump, during his archetypal word successful office, unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 atomic deal betwixt Iran and a fig of satellite powers. The past large seizure came erstwhile Iran took 2 Greek tankers successful May 2022 and held them until November of that year.

Mideast AP Explains Iran US Persian Gulf

Those attacks were mostly subsumed by the Iranian-backed Houthis' assaults targeting ships during the , which drastically reduced shipping successful the important Red Sea corridor.

The years of hostility betwixt Iran and the West, coupled with the concern successful the Gaza Strip, exploded into a full-scale 12-day warfare successful June.

Iran agelong has threatened to adjacent disconnected the Strait of Hormuz, the constrictive rima of the Persian Gulf done which 20% of each lipid traded passes. The U.S. Navy has patrolled the Mideast done its Bahrain-based 5th Fleet to support the waterways open.