JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Iran on Monday of attacking an Israeli-owned ship in the Gulf of Oman last week, a mysterious explosion that further heightened security concerns in the region.
Without offering any evidence for his claim, Netanyahu told Israeli public broadcaster Kan that “it was really an act of Iran, that much is clear”.
“Iran is Israel’s biggest enemy, I am determined to stop it. We are reaching across the region, ”said Netanyahu. Iran immediately rejected the charges.
The blast hit Israeli MV Helios Ray, a Bahamas-flagged roll-on and roll-off cargo ship that was leaving the Middle East en route to Singapore on Friday. The crew left unscathed, but the ship had two holes on the port side and two on the starboard side just above the waterline, according to American defense officials.
The ship arrived at Dubai port for repairs on Sunday, days after the explosion that revived safety concerns on Middle East waterways amid mounting tensions with Iran.
Iran has sought to pressure the United States to lift sanctions on Tehran, as President Joe Biden’s government is considering the option of returning to negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. Biden has repeatedly said that the U.S. would return to the nuclear deal between Tehran and the world powers that its predecessor, Donald Trump, withdrew in 2018 only after Iran re-established its full compliance with the deal.
The explosion on the Israeli ship last week recalled the tense summer of 2019, when the U.S. military accused Iran of attacking several oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman with limpet mines, designed to be magnetically coupled to a ship’s hull. The Gulf of Oman passes through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital gateway for world oil supplies. Tehran has denied allegations of being behind the attacks on the limpet mines.
It is not yet clear what caused Friday’s explosion at Helios Ray. The ship unloaded cars at several ports in the Persian Gulf before the explosion forced it to reverse course. Over the weekend, Israel’s Defense Minister and the army chief indicated that they held Iran responsible for what they said was an attack on the ship.
Iran responded to Netanyahu’s statement saying it “strongly rejected” the claim that it was behind the attack. At a press conference, Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said Netanyahu was “suffering from an obsession with Iran” and described his accusations as “fomenting fear”.
Khatibzadeh also accused Israel of carrying out “suspicious actions in the region” against Iran in recent months to undermine the 2015 nuclear deal, without giving further details, and promised that Iran would respond.
“Israel knows very well that our response in the field of national security has always been fierce and accurate,” he said.
Overnight, Syrian state media reported a series of alleged Israeli air strikes near Damascus, saying that air defense systems had intercepted most of the missiles. Israeli media reported that the alleged air strikes were against Iranian targets in response to the attack on the ship.
Israel has hit hundreds of Iranian targets in neighboring Syria in recent years, and Netanyahu has said repeatedly that Israel will not accept a permanent Iranian military presence there. Iran and its Lebanese representative, Hezbollah, provided military support to Syrian President Bashar Assad in the Syrian civil war of more than a decade.
The Israeli army declined to comment.
Iran also blamed Israel for a recent series of attacks, including another 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 nuclear program. of the Islamic Republic. decades ago. Iran has repeatedly promised to avenge Fakhrizadeh’s death.
“The most important thing is that Iran does not have nuclear weapons, with or without an agreement, that also told my friend Biden,” said Netanyahu on Monday.
Iranian retaliation threats have raised alarms in Israel since the signing of standardization agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in September.
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Associated Press editors Isabel DeBre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.