Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Thursday that it had seized two vessels allegedly involved in “fuel smuggling in the Persian Gulf” and detained 15 foreign crew members, who were transferred to Iran’s judicial authorities.
The announcement comes amid Iranian concerns over a possible imminent U.S. attack and after a series of provocations by Tehran’s armed forces against U.S. interests in the region.
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Trump said in an interview on Wednesday night that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei 'should be very concerned'
(Photos: Anna Moneymaker/AFP, KHAMENEI.IR/AFP)
According to Iran’s Tasnim news agency, the vessels had been engaged in fuel smuggling in recent months and were found carrying more than one million liters of smuggled fuel. The IRGC said the ships were identified and seized following intelligence work by its naval forces. No details were provided on the nationality of the detained crew members or the flags under which the vessels were sailing.
The seizure follows two unusual incidents in the Strait of Hormuz and the Arabian Sea earlier this week that were widely seen as Iranian provocations. In one incident, a U.S. military F-35 fighter jet shot down an Iranian Shahed-139 drone that was flying toward the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln while it was sailing about 800 kilometers from Iran in the Arabian Sea.
In another, an IRGC drone and fast boats approached a U.S.-flagged vessel in the Strait of Hormuz, north of Oman, and ordered it to stop. U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal that the boats approached the tanker Stena Imperative and instructed it to shut down its engines and prepare to be towed, but the vessel accelerated and managed to reach a U.S. warship, which escorted it to safety.
On Wednesday night, hours after reports that the United States had canceled talks with Iran scheduled for Friday in Oman, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced that the talks would go ahead after all. A senior White House official confirmed that the contacts were back on track following pressure from Arab and Muslim leaders. In Jerusalem, the Security Cabinet is set to convene Thursday at 4 p.m. at the Prime Minister’s Office for a discussion brought forward from Sunday in light of regional developments.
In a social media post published Wednesday night, Araghchi signaled that the talks in Oman are meant to focus solely on nuclear issues, not on Iran’s ballistic missiles or its regional proxy groups, despite earlier messages from Washington. His post came shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump said in an interview with NBC that Tehran was still negotiating but warned that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei “should be very concerned.” Trump added that the United States had identified an Iranian attempt to establish a new nuclear facility and warned: “I said, ‘If you do this — we will do very bad things to you.’”