DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – An explosion hit an Israeli cargo ship leaving the Middle East on Friday, an unexplained explosion renewing concerns about the ship’s security in the region amid escalating tensions between the US and the United States. Will.
The crew and the ship were safe, according to UK Maritime Trade Operations, managed by the British Navy. The explosion in the Gulf of Oman forced the ship to go to the nearest port.
The incident recalled the summer of 2019, when the same location saw a series of suspicious attacks that the United States Navy attributed to Iran, which Tehran denied. Meanwhile, while US President Joe Biden tries to reactivate nuclear talks with Iran, he has ordered night air strikes in facilities in Syria belonging to a powerful Iranian-backed Iraqi armed group.
Dryad Global, a maritime intelligence company, identified the affected vessel as the MV Helios Ray, a roll-on and roll-off vehicle cargo ship with the Bahamas flag. Another private security officer, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, similarly identified the ship as Helios Ray.
Satellite tracking data from MarineTraffic.com showed that Helios Ray was about to enter the Arabian Sea at about 6am GMT on Friday before suddenly turning around and starting back towards the Strait of Hormuz. He was coming from Dammam, Saudi Arabia, and he still listed Singapore as a destination on his tracker.
Israel’s Channel 13, in a report without sources, said the assessment in Israel is that Iran was behind the explosion. Israeli officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The explosion comes as Tehran increasingly breaks its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers to create influence over Washington. Iran is trying to pressure Biden to grant relief from the sanctions it received in the deal that former President Donald Trump abandoned almost three years ago.
Iran has also blamed Israel for a recent series of attacks, including a mysterious explosion last summer that destroyed an advanced centrifuge assembly plant at its Natanz nuclear facility and the death of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a leading Iranian scientist who founded the Islamic Republic’s military nuclear program two decades ago.
Captain Ranjith Raja of the data firm Refinitiv told the AP that the Israeli-owned ship had left the Persian Gulf on Thursday for Singapore. On Friday at 0230 GMT, the ship stopped for at least 9 hours east of a main port in Oman before making a 360 degree turn and sailing towards Dubai, probably for damage and repair assessments, he said. he.
The ship came loaded with cargo from Europe. It unloaded vehicles at various ports in the region, added Raja, including Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, with its last stop in Dammam.
Although the details of the explosion remained unclear, two American defense officials told the AP that the ship had two holes on the port side and two on starboard just above the water line in the explosion. Authorities said it was not clear what caused the holes. They spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to discuss undisclosed information about the incidents.
A United Nations vessel database identified the ship’s owners as a Tel Aviv-based company called Ray Shipping Ltd. The calls to Ray Shipping were not answered on Friday.
Abraham Ungar, 74, known as “Rami”, is the founder of Ray Shipping Ltd. and is known as one of Israel’s richest men. He made a fortune in navigation and construction.
According to Nikola Y. Vaptsarov Naval Academy, where Ungar provides maritime support and training, he owns dozens of car transport ships and employs thousands of engineers.
The US Navy’s 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, said it was “aware and monitoring” the situation.
Although the circumstances of the explosion remain unclear, Dryad Global said it is very possible that the explosion originated from “asymmetric activity by the Iranian military”.
While Iran seeks to pressure the United States to lift sanctions, the country may seek to “exercise vigorous diplomacy by military means,” said Dryad. Iran did not immediately recognize the incident.
In the tense summer of 2019, the U.S. military blamed Iran for the explosions on two oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most strategic sea routes in the world. The United States also attributed a series of other suspicious attacks to Iran, including the use of limpet mines – designed to be magnetically coupled to a ship’s hull – to paralyze four tankers from the neighboring port of Fujairah in the Emirates.
Since the death of Fakhrizadeh, the Iranian nuclear scientist, last November, Israeli officials have raised alarms about potential Iranian retaliation, including through their regional representatives such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
Over the years, Iran has been associated with attacks on Israeli and Jewish civilian targets in Latin America, Europe and Asia. Israel did not comment on its supposed role in the scientist’s death.
Friday’s incident also follows normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The deals, which received strong criticism from Iran, solidified an emerging regional alliance against the Islamic Republic.
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Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman in Tel Aviv, Israel, Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.