The crew was arrested. On Monday, Iran announced that it had boarded a foreign oil tanker accused of smuggling fuel in the Gulf. “The Navy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [l’armée idéologique de l’Iran] seized a foreign tanker carrying 11 million liters of smuggled fuel in the waters of the Persian Gulf,” Judicial Authority chief of Hormozgan province in southern Iran, Mojtaba Ghahremani, was quoted as saying by the Tasnim agency.
Iran has reported in recent months several arrests of ships in the sea lanes serving the Gulf, where a large part of the world’s oil production originates and transits.
A precedent in September
“The captain and crew of the foreign tanker are in custody to complete the investigation process and legal proceedings,” Mojtaba Ghahremani added. He did not specify the nationality of the ship or the date of its boarding.
In September, Iranian forces claimed to have seized another foreign boat carrying 757,000 liters of smuggled fuel in the same area. The price of fuel in Iran is one of the lowest in the world, which makes traffic to other countries all the more profitable.