SEOUL (AP) – Armed troops from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard raided a South Korean tanker and forced the ship to change course and travel to Iran, the ship’s owner said on Tuesday, the latest maritime seizure by Tehran on Tuesday. amid increased tensions with the West over its nuclear program.
The military attack on Monday at Mt Hankuk Chemi contradicts Iranian explanations that they stopped the ship for polluting the waters of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, it appeared that the Islamic Republic was looking to increase its influence over Seoul before negotiations on billions of dollars in Iranian assets frozen in South Korean banks amid a US pressure campaign targeting Iran.
A spokesman for the Iranian government, when asked about the seizure on Tuesday, offered Tehran’s most direct recognition of a link to the frozen goods.
“If anyone is to be called hostage taker, it is the South Korean government that has taken our more than $ 7 billion hostage under a futile pretext,” said spokesman Ali Rabiei.
Iran on Monday also started enriching uranium by up to 20%, a small technical step away from the 90% armament grade levels in its underground Fordo facility. This measure appeared to be aimed at putting pressure on the United States in the last days of President Donald Trump’s government, which unilaterally withdrew from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
Later on Tuesday, comments from the head of Iran’s civilian nuclear program suggested that current production of 20% enriched uranium in Tehran would not reach the levels required for a nuclear weapon for more than two years, giving potential time for negotiations under President-elect Joe Biden.
An official at DM Shipping Co. Ltd. in Busan, South Korea, who spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists, gave details of the seizure of Hankuk Chemi. The ship was traveling from Jubail, Saudi Arabia, to Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, when Iranian forces arrived on the ship and said they would board it.
Initially, Iranian forces said they wanted to do an unspecified check on the ship, the official said. While the ship’s captain spoke to company security officials in South Korea, armed Iranian troops stormed the tank while an Iranian helicopter flew over, the official said. The troops demanded that the captain drive the tanker into Iranian waters because of an unspecified investigation and refused to explain, the official added.
Since then, the company has been unable to contact the captain, the official said. The security cameras installed on the ship that initially transmitted images of the scene on deck to the company are now turned off, the official said.
After the company lost contact with the captain, the company received an anti-piracy security alert, suggesting that the captain activated an on-board alert system, the official said. It is not yet clear whether the ship tried to call for outside help.
The 5th Fleet, based in the US Navy’s Middle East, routinely patrols the area along with an American-led coalition that monitors the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf where 20% of the world’s oil passes. A separate Europe-led effort also operates there.
The official denied that the vessel is polluting the waters.
In recent months, Iran has tried to increase pressure on South Korea to unlock some $ 7 billion in frozen assets from oil sales obtained before the Trump administration tightened sanctions on the country’s oil exports.
The head of Iran’s central bank recently announced that the country was trying to use funds tied to a South Korean bank to buy coronavirus vaccines through COVAX, an international program designed to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to participating countries.
South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Tuesday that it plans to send a delegation of officials to Iran for negotiations on how to secure the early release of the ship and its crew. The crew included sailors from Indonesia, Myanmar, South Korea and Vietnam, according to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. South Korea’s Ministry of Defense said it was sending its anti-piracy unit close to the Strait of Hormuz – a 4,400-ton destroyer with about 300 soldiers.
South Korea’s presidential office said on Tuesday that it sees the seizure of Iranian ships “very seriously”.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Choi Young-sam said Iranian officials assured South Korea that the ship’s crew was safe. He said a South Korean diplomat based in Iran was sent to the location of the detained ship.
The US State Department has joined South Korea to call for the immediate release of the oil tanker, accusing Iran of threatening “rights and freedoms of navigation” in the Persian Gulf to “extort the international community to ease the pressure of sanctions”.
Last year, Iran similarly seized a British-flagged oil tanker and held it for months after one of its tankers was detained off Gibraltar.
Meanwhile, in Tehran, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization told state television that the current production of uranium enriched with 20% of the Islamic Republic would be about 9 kilos (20 pounds) per month.
Ali Akbar Salehi’s comments mean that Iran would need more than two years at that rate to have the 240 kilograms (530 pounds) that experts say is needed to reprocess to 90% levels for weapons. Salehi said Iran is also working to install newer, faster centrifuges at its facilities.
Also on Tuesday, the Iranian military began an extensive two-day air exercise in the north of the country, state media reported, featuring unmanned combat and surveillance planes, as well as naval drones dispatched from ships in southern waters. State television broadcast images of dozens of drones on a runway in Semnan province, near the vast Kavir desert.
Iran has already conducted exercises with military drones; he routinely disseminates images of surveillance drones from U.S. aircraft carriers passing through the Persian Gulf. This week’s exercise also incorporates modern “suicide drones” that hover over a battlefield before plunging into a target, the TV report said.
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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press editors Nasser Karimi and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran; and Isabel DeBre in Dubai contributed to this report.