DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – An Iranian cargo ship believed to be a base for the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and anchored for years in the Red Sea off Yemen has been attacked, Tehran admitted on Wednesday.
Iran’s foreign ministry has confirmed the attack on MV Saviz, suspected of being carried out by Israel. The assault took place while Iran and world powers settled in Vienna for the first discussions about the fact that the USA could accede to the potential nuclear agreement in Tehran, showing that the future challenges do not lie only in these negotiations.
The long presence of the ship in the region, repeatedly criticized by Saudi Arabia, came as experts from the West and the United Nations say Iran has provided weapons and support to Yemeni Houthi rebels amid years of war. . Iran denies arming of Houthis, though components found in rebel weapons link to Tehran.
Iran has previously described Saviz as helping “anti-piracy” efforts in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a crucial point for the suffocation of international transport. A statement attributed to Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh described the ship as a merchant ship.
“Fortunately, no casualties have been reported … and technical investigations are ongoing,” Khatibzadeh said. “Our country will take all necessary measures through international authorities.”
In a previous state TV statement, an anchor quoted a story from the New York Times, which quoted an anonymous American official who told the newspaper that Israel informed America that it carried out an attack on the ship on Tuesday morning. Israeli officials declined to comment on the incident when they reached the Associated Press, as did owner Saviz.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday brought Iran into a speech to his Likud party after being asked to form a government following the country’s recent elections.
“We must not return to the dangerous nuclear deal with Iran, because a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to the state of Israel and a great threat to the security of the entire world,” Netanyahu said.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday called the talks in Vienna a “success” while talking to his cabinet.
“Today, a united statement is heard saying that all parties to the nuclear agreement have come to the conclusion that there is no better solution than the agreement,” he said.
The semi-official Iranian Tasnim agency, believed to be close to the guard, blamed the explosives on the explosives planted on Saviz’s body. He did not blame anyone for the attack and said that Iranian officials will provide more information in the coming days.
In a statement, the US Army Central Command said only that it was “aware that the media was reporting an incident involving Saviz in the Red Sea.”
“We can confirm that no US forces were involved in the incident,” the command said. “We have no additional information to provide.”
Saviz, owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s shipping line, arrived in the Red Sea in late 2016, according to ship tracking data. In the years that followed, he left the Dahlak archipelago, a chain of islands off the coast of the nearby African nation, Eritrea, in the Red Sea. He probably received supplies and changed crew by passing Iranian ships using the waterway.
Saudi military intelligence, previously obtained by the AP, showed men on the ship dressed in camouflage, military-style suits, and small boats capable of carrying cargo on the Yemeni coast. This information material also included images showing a variety of antennas on the ship, which the Saudi government described as unusual for a commercial cargo ship, suggesting that it performed electronic surveillance. Other images showed that the ship had .50 caliber machine gun mounts.
The Washington Institute for Middle Eastern Policy called Saviz the “Iranian mother ship” in the region, similarly describing it as an intelligence-gathering base and a guard weapon. The institute’s policy documents do not explain how they came to this conclusion, although its analysts routinely have access to Gulf and Israeli military sources.
Saviz was under international sanctions until Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which saw Tehran receive economic aid in exchange for limiting uranium enrichment. The Trump administration later renewed US sanctions against Saviz as part of its decision to unilaterally withdraw from the agreement.
In June 2019, Saudi Arabia flew a seriously ill Iranian from Saviz after Tehran made a request through the United Nations for assistance.
Amid rising tensions between the United States and Iran, a series of mysterious explosions have targeted ships in the region, including some US navies blamed on Iran.. Among the recently damaged ships was an Israeli-owned vehicle carrier in an attack that Netanyahu blamed on Iran.. Another was an Iranian cargo ship in the Mediterranean.
Iran blames Israel for recent series of attacks, including a mysterious July explosion that destroyed an advanced centrifuge assembly plant at its Natanz nuclear facility. Another is the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in November, a top Iranian scientist who founded the Islamic Republic’s military nuclear program two decades ago.
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Associated Press journalists Nasser Karimi and Mehdi Fattahi from Tehran, Iran, contributed to the report.
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