Iran’s supreme leader says oil taken from Greek tankers
Tehran: Iran's highest leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday that Iran took oil from two Greek tankers last month in an attack launched by helicopters in the Arab Gulf.
The confiscation was a retaliation for the Greek role in the struggle for US crude oil from Iranian -flagged tankers on the same week in the Mediterranean Sea over violating Washington's strong sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
"They stole Iranian oil from the Greek coast, then our brave people who were not afraid to die respond and seized enemy oil tankers," Khamenei said for 80 minutes of speech about the commemoration of the death of the late Islamic Founding Republican, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
This seizure increases the tension between Iran and the West which has boiled over the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement with world power. Tehran has enriched more uranium, closer to the level of weapons than before, causing fears that negotiators will not find a way back to Accord and increase the risk of wider war.
The confiscation of Iranian tankers is the latest in a series of piracy and explosion to compete with an area that includes the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow mouth of the Arab Bay where one fifth of all the oil operand traded. The incident began after President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from a nuclear agreement, who saw Tehran drastically limit the enrichment of uranium by rewarding the revocation of economic sanctions.
The US Navy blamed Iran for a series of attacks on the vessels of ships that damaged tankers in 2019, as well as for fatal drones against oil tankers related to Israel that killed two European crew members in 2021.
Iran also briefly captured the Panama asphalt tanker from last year's UAE and took a short time and held a Vietnamese tanker in November.
Tehran denied carrying out attacks but a wider warfare between Iran and the West had played in volatile waters in the region.
The tanker seizure has been part of it since 2019, when Iran seized Stena Impero England after the British held the Iranian oil tanker from Gibraltar. Tehran released a tanker for months later as London also released the Iranian ship.
Iran last year also seized and held a South Korean-flagged tanker for months amid more than billions of frozen assets held by Seoul.
Satellite images were analyzed by AP on Wednesday confirmed that one of the two tankers remained off the coast of Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas. PBC Pictures Planet Labs from Tuesday show a wise soldier between the dealer of Abbas and the iran iran island near the Strategic Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Arab Bay where one fifth of all the trajectories traded by world oil.
It is still unclear where the second ship, Delta Poseidon, is located.
However, the monitoring service for shipping Tankerrtrackers.com said on Saturday that it was located in the Delta Poseidon on the northeast coast of Qeshm Island.
The tanker was reportedly moved from the previous location on Larak Island, which has been one of Iran's main export points since 1987.