Iranian Boats Accused of Trying to Seize British Oil Tanker
The tanker waited in Saudi waters for two days for a British escort warship to arrive
Editor’s note: The ship wasn’t in Iranian waters and was being escorted by a British warship so it sounds unlikely to me the Iranians would attempt this. After the Brits made a show of having the tanker wait in Saudi waters for two days for the escort warship to arrive it seems the Iranians always going to get accused of something regardless of the facts.
[US] Officials are accusing five Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps boats of having tried to capture the British Heritage, an oil tanker that was sailing in the Persian Gulf at the time. The tanker was escorted by the HMS Montrose, a British frigate who ordered the Iranian boats off.
After British Royal Marines seized an Iranian tanker near Gibraltar, BP was concerned that this particular oil tanker was going to be targeted.The tanker had been waiting in Saudi waters for fear it was going to be targeted.
Officials say that the Iranian boats ordered the British Heritage into Iranian waters. It didn’t go, and the HMS Montrose, which was following behind the tanker, told the boats to go away, which they did. No shots were fired.
Five Iranian IRGC boats unsuccessfully tried to seize a British oil tanker "British Heritage" in the Persian Gulf today, US officials with knowledge of the incident tell @barbarastarrcnn. The Iranians ordered the tanker to change course & stop in nearby Iranian territorial waters
— Ryan Browne (@rabrowne75) July 10, 2019
Iranian officials did not address the specific incident, though President Hassan Rouhani had warned Britain about “consequences” for having captured their tanker, and there was a lot of expectation it would be a tit-for-tat move like this.
US officials claimed to have captured “video footage” of the incident, though so far this has not been released. British officials have not officially commented on what happened, though in practice it seems that nothing ended up happening, with no shots fired and no ships actually captured.
Officials say a US surveillance aircraft was overhead & recorded video of the incident. The Royal Navy frigate HMS Montrose had been escorting the tanker from the rear. It trained its deck guns on the Iranians & gave them a verbal warning to back away which they subsequently did https://t.co/VBQJA4FIrX
— Ryan Browne (@rabrowne75) July 10, 2019
UPDATE: London has since claimed the Iranians “attempted to impede” the passage of the tanker after which the British frigate trained its gun on them.
Source: Antiwar.com
Turn about is fair play no?
Britain steals an Iranian Tanker, Iran should be able to steal one of Britains oil tankers.
Except if Iran had wanted to sink the bath tub navy boat of the Brits, take that tanker, they would have.
Just more Rat lies from the Rat’s minions.
I suppose Iran could have sunk the British Navy ship with a silkworm missile but they would have paid dearly for doing so.
“US officials claimed to have captured “video footage” of the incident,”
>more hollywood horseshit.
Yes, more grainy video that looks like it’s from 1981 and could be of any boat anywhere is what I’m expecting.
Iran should just declare the Strait of Hormuz closed to traffic. Watch the price of oil go to $1000 a barrel. See if Jeremy Hunt is so keen on piracy then.
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/07/11/600708/US-officials-push-for-sanctions-on-China-over-Iran
Did the Bolton strategy change? I see a semi-elaborate plan to deny China a major energy source of Iranian oil while pushing the Iran regime change gambit.
How this plays into the US-China trade war negotiations isn’t immediately clear, unless removing the energy source is one way of getting China to relent on trade.
Perhaps the administration is going for the China energy-cum-economy kill shot.