Israeli ship hit by internal explosion, not Iranian attack – Hezbollah media

Hezbollah-affiliated newspaper Al-Mayadeen released a video on Monday that allegedly shows that the Israeli ship allegedly the target of an Iranian attack in the Gulf of Oman last month was damaged by an internal explosion. The footage was reportedly recorded by an Iranian drone. Al-Mayadeen said the footage proved that the holes in the ship’s hull were caused by explosions from inside the ship, not from outside. An Iranian official told Al-Mayadeen that the timing was also not good for an operation against an Israeli cargo ship, saying that “there is no reason to carry out an operation against an Israeli cargo ship, especially in the weeks before the elections.”“[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s claim that Iran was targeting the ship on the eve of the Israeli elections raises suspicion, “added the unidentified official as,”[US President Joe] Biden’s rise to power and the decline of [Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed] Bin Salman’s power heightened the Zionist entity’s fears. “The official said that the ship was first monitored in the area in March last year and docked in Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, according to Al-Mayadeen.An analyst at Al-Mayadeen further emphasized that” Iran could have targeted the Israeli ship in the Gulf of Oman from the first moment it monitored it in March last year. “The carrier vehicle MV Helios Ray was hit in late February by an explosion above the waterline that a US official said he had drilled holes on both sides of the hull, an Israeli official said that limpet mines were used.

Although Netanyahu blamed Iran for the attack, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh denied the claim, saying “the source of this accusation shows how unfounded it is”. “The prime minister of the Zionist regime is suffering from a mental illness. This regime knows that in our sphere of security, our response has been precise and firm,” said the spokesman at the time. A senior security officer told Walla! news that the attack on the Israeli-owned ship was carried out in response to a covert operation by Israel and not in response to the murders of former Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani and Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Last week, an analysis of the Iranian regime controlled the daily Kayhan, whose editor-in-chief is appointed by the Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, referred to the attack on the Israeli ship as a response to attacks on Iranian and pro-Iranian forces in Syria. and Iraq. stated that there is “no trace” of the identity of the attackers and claimed that the vessel was under the flag of another country. The newspaper further claimed that the ship was a military ship spying in the Persian Gulf and not a commercial ship. The analysis concluded that the ship “probably was ambushed by one of the branches of the resistance axis”, but did not go so far as to explicitly state that Iran or one of its representatives was responsible for the incident.Reuters, Lahav Harkov and Sarah Chemla contributed to this report.