Five armed Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats have launched an unsuccessful attempt to seize a British oil tanker in the Gulf.
The tanker was entering the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic shipping route between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, when it was approached by the Iranian vessels on Wednesday.
The Iranians ordered the tanker to stop in their territorial waters. The Royal Navy’s HMS Montrose, which was escorting the British ship, aimed its guns at the Iranian boats and warned them to move away, which they did.
The incident was filmed by a US aircraft overhead.
The British government confirmed the incident in a statement on Thursday.
“We are concerned by this action and continue to urge the Iranian authorities to de-escalate the situation in the region,” the US’s Associated Press reported it as saying.
Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards rejected the claims. In a statement carried by the semi-official Fars news agency, they said their patrol boats were carrying out normal duties.
“In the past 24 hours there has been no encounter with foreign ships including English ships,” the statement said.
Wednesday’s incident came almost a week after British Royal Marines boarded an Iranian tanker, Grace 1, off Gibraltar and seized it on suspicion it was violating the European Union’s sanctions by shipping about 2 million barrels of crude oil to Syria.
Read the article in The New Daily.