SEOUL (AP) – Iranian Revolutionary Guard armed forces stormed a South Korean oil tanker and forced the ship to change course and travel to Iran, the ship’s owner said on Tuesday, the latest maritime hijacking in Tehran amid increased tensions with the West over its nuclear program.
Monday’s military raid on MT Hankuk Chemi contradicted Iranian explanations that they stopped the ship to pollute the waters of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, it appears that the Islamic Republic tried to increase its leverage on Seoul before the $ 1 billion deal in frozen Iranian assets in South Korean banks amid a US pressure campaign targeting Iran.
An Iranian government spokesman when asked about the confiscation on Tuesday offered Tehran’s most direct recognition so far of a link to the frozen assets.
“If anyone is called hostage, the South Korean government has taken our $ 7 billion hostage under unnecessary pretext,” spokesman Ali Rabiei said.
On Monday, Iran also started enriching uranium by up to 20%, a small technical step away from the 90% armament levels, at its Fordo underground installation. The move came as a result of pressure from the US in the last days of President Donald Trump’s administration, which unilaterally withdrew from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
Later on Tuesday, comments by the head of Iran’s civilian nuclear program suggested that Tehran’s current 20% enriched uranium production would not reach the levels required for a nuclear weapon in more than two years, which could give time for negotiations under President-elect Joe Biden.
An official from DM Shipping Co. Ltd. in Busan, South Korea, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak to reporters, provided details about the seizure of Hankuk Chemi. The ship was traveling from Jubail, Saudi Arabia, to Fujairah, in the United Arab Emirates, when Iranian forces arrived on the ship and said they would board.
Initially, Iranian forces said they wanted to conduct an unspecified check on the ship, the official said. As the ship’s captain spoke with the company’s security officials in South Korea, Iranian armed forces stormed the tanker while an Iranian helicopter flew overhead, the official said. The troops asked the captain to navigate the tanker in Iranian waters following an unspecified investigation and refused to explain themselves, the official added.
Since then, the company has not been able to reach the captain, the official said. The security cameras installed on the ship that initially transmitted the recordings from the deck stage to the company are now stopped, the official said.
After the company lost contact with the captain, the company received an anti-piracy security alert notification, suggesting the captain activated an on-board warning system, the official said. It remains unclear whether the ship attempted to seek external assistance.
The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet in the Mideast routinely patrols the area with an American-led coalition monitoring the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of the world’s oil passes. A separate European-led effort operates there as well.
The official denied that the ship had polluted the waters.
In recent months, Iran has tried to step up pressure on South Korea to release frozen assets of about $ 7 billion in oil sales earned before the Trump administration tightened sanctions on the country’s oil exports.
The head of Iran’s central bank recently announced that the country is trying to use funds tied up in a South Korean bank to buy coronavirus vaccines through COVAX, an international program designed to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to participating countries.
South Korea’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday it intended to send a delegation of officials to Iran to discuss early release of the ship and its crew. The crew included sailors from Indonesia, Myanmar, South Korea and Vietnam, according to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. South Korea’s Defense Ministry says it is sending its anti-piracy unit near the Strait of Hormuz – a 4,400-ton destroyer with about 300 soldiers.
South Korea’s presidential bureau said on Tuesday it saw Iranian seizure of ships as “very serious”.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Choi Young-sam said Iranian officials had assured South Korea that the ship’s crew was safe. He said a South Korean diplomat based in Iran had been sent to the location of the detained ship.
The US State Department has joined South Korea in demanding the immediate release of the tank, accusing Iran of threatening “navigation rights and freedoms” in the Persian Gulf to “extort the international community to ease the pressure of sanctions”.
Last year, Iran similarly confiscated a British-flagged oil tanker and detained him months after one of its oil tankers was detained off the coast of Gibraltar.
Meanwhile, in Tehran, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran told state television that current uranium production enriched by 20% in the Islamic Republic will be about 9 kilograms (20 pounds) per month.
Ali Akbar Salehi’s comments mean that Iran would need more than two years at the same rate to weigh 240 kilograms (£ 530), according to experts, to be reprocessed at 90% for weapons. Salehi said Iran is also working on installing newer and faster centrifuges at its facilities.
Also Tuesday, the Iranian military began a two-day air exercise in the north of the country, state media reported, with unmanned combat and surveillance aircraft, as well as naval drones dispatched from ships in Iran’s southern waters. State television broadcast images of dozens of drones on a runway in the northern province of Semnan, near the vast Kavir desert.
Iran has previously conducted military drone drills; it typically releases images from the surveillance drones of American aircraft carriers passing through the Persian Gulf. This week’s exercise also incorporates modern “suicide drones” floating across a battlefield before launching at a target, the TV report said.
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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi and Amir Vahdat of Tehran, Iran; and Isabel DeBre of Dubai contributed to this report.