By Dan Williams
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Iran on Monday for the explosion on board an Israeli ship in the Gulf of Oman, an accusation rejected by Tehran.
Car carrier MV Helios Ray was struck between Thursday night and Friday morning by an explosion above the waterline that a U.S. official said had made holes in both sides of the hull. An Israeli official said that limpet mines were used.
“This was in fact an operation by Iran. That is clear,” Netanyahu told Kan radio.
Asked if Israel would retaliate, he said: “You know my policy. Iran is Israel’s biggest enemy. I am determined to reject it. We are attacking across the region.”
Iran has denied involvement. “We strongly reject this accusation,” Saeed Khatibzadeh, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Tehran, told a news conference. “The security of the Persian Gulf is extremely important to Iran and we will not allow them to spread fear in the region on such charges.”
“The Zionist regime (Israel) knows very well that our response to our questions and areas of security is always firm and precise,” he said, adding that Israel is the source of all the region’s instability.
Kan said Netanyahu’s interview was pre-recorded on Sunday night, before Syria accused Israel of carrying out missile strikes in southern Damascus.
Israel did not confirm the carrying out of these attacks, but said earlier that it was launching frequent military actions against the deployment of Iran or the delivery of weapons within Syria.
Yoav Galant, minister in the Netanyahu security office and a former navy admiral, said Helios Ray’s photos showed that each hole resulted from “a mine posted outside, apparently in a navy night command operation”.
Perpetrators knew about the Israeli property of the open source material ship, and the incident occurred near the Iran-controlled coast, Galant told Ynet TV – adding that a formal investigation had confirmed his observations.
Iran said in November that it would give a “calculated” response to the death of its top nuclear scientist, which it attributed to Israel. Israel did not respond to this accusation.
Tensions have increased in the Gulf region since the United States re-imposed sanctions on Iran in 2018, after then President Donald Trump withdrew Washington from a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the major powers.
(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell and Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Himani Sarkar, Shri Navaratnam, Edwina Gibbs, William Maclean)