Iranian gunboats fired at a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, according to UK Maritime Trade Operations, following Tehran’s move to reinstate restrictions on the key shipping route.
The tanker’s captain reported being approached 37 kilometers (23 miles) northeast of Oman by two gunboats of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC). Without any radio warning, the gunboats “then fired upon the tanker”, the UK Maritime Trade Operations Centre said in an online statement.
“Tanker and crew are reported safe. Authorities are investigating,” it reported, without identifying the vessel or its destination.
TankerTrackers.com reported vessels were forced to turn around in the strait, including an Indian-flagged super tanker, after they were fired on by Iran.
Iran’s joint military command said on Saturday that “control of the Strait of Hormuz has returned to its previous state… under strict management and control of the armed forces.”
It warned that it would continue to block transit through the strait as long as the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports remained in effect.
Ebrahim Azizi, head of the Iranian parliament’s National Security Commission, said that the strait was “returning to the status quo,” which he had earlier described as ships requiring Iranian naval authorization and toll payment before transiting.
The shift came a day after Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi declared the strait open while a 10-day truce was announced between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon. An end to Israel’s war with Hezbollah was a key demand of Iranian negotiators, who previously accused Israel of breaking last week’s ceasefire with strikes on Lebanon. Israel had said that deal did not cover Lebanon.
U.S. President Donald Trump first appeared to take a similar position on reopening the strait before later saying the American blockade “will remain in full force” regardless of what Iran does until a deal is reached, including about Iran’s nuclear program.
Even as the U.S.-Iran ceasefire appeared to hold, the back-and-forth over the strait – through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil typically passes – highlighted how easily it could unravel
Control over the strait has proven to be one Iran’s main points of leverage and prompted the United States to deploy forces and initiate a blockade on Iranian ports as part of an effort to force Iran to accept a Pakistan-brokered ceasefire to end almost seven weeks of war that has raged between Israel, the U.S. and Iran.
