August 06, 2021
by Warren L. Nelson
A tanker sailing off Oman has been attacked by what are believed to be Iranian drones, resulting in the deaths of two crewmen a Briton, who was a guard, and a Romanian, who was the skipper the first time anyone has died in a series of Israeli and Iranian attacks on each other’s shipping over the past year.
But the ship that was attacked was not Israeli. It is owned by a Japanese firm and flies the Liberian flag. Its only link to Israel is that a London-based ship management firm owned by an Israeli was managing the 50,000-ton ship, Mercer Street.
The fact that crewmen died in the July 29 attack gives an entirely new perspective to this incident. All the previous presumed attacks by Israelis on Iranian ships and by Iran on Israeli ships have been relatively minor affairs. No ships were ever sunk. No one was killed or even injured. The attacks were above the waterline with small amounts of explosives, so that most of the ships just continued on their way to their destinations without diverting.
After this latest attack, Israel, the United States, Romania and Britain all said the attack was definitely launched by Iran. The US Navy, which was escorting the damaged ship, has placed a team on board the tanker. It has access to the wreckage of the drone or whatever struck the ship. The foreign ministers of the G7 countries Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US later issued a statement saying, “We condemn the unlawful attack committed on a commercial vessel. This was a deliberate and targeted attackÖ. All available evidence clearly points to Iran.”
One might ask why Iran would use one of its drones to attack a ship, when the likelihood would be that the wreckage would provide the evidence that its denial of any involvement was false. In the past, Iran has usually attacked by sending a small boat up to the side of the target ship and attaching a magnetic mine to the hull of the ship, well above the waterline.
Iran has flatly denied any role in the attack, dismissing the allegations against it as “childish” cant propounded by Zionist groups.
Because of the two deaths, this attack is far more serious than previous ones. That begs the question of whether Iran consciously sought to raise the level of its confrontation with Israel by drawing blood or if the Islamic Republic has made a serious error. Some news reports said more than one drone was flown against the ship, which would suggest the attacker wanted to maximize its chances of killing crewmen.
Early reports said the drone struck and exploded in the crew living quarters just below the bridge, while others said the explosive hit the bridge itself. A US official told The Associated Press the drone blasted a hole through the top of the tanker’s bridge, the ship’s command center. Either location would have crew inside at all times and such an attack there would almost certainly cause bloodshed. But it wasn’t clear if the drone could be aimed that accurately.
The charges of Iranian involvement weren’t made by anonymous officials but by Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“Upon review of the available information, we are confident that Iran conducted this attack, which killed two innocent people, using one-way explosive UAVs,” Blinken said in a statement. Blinken said Washington is “working with partners” on what he termed an “appropriate response” to the attack.
Earlier, Raab said the “unlawful and callous” attack had highly likely been carried out by Iran using one or more drones. “We believe this attack was deliberate, targeted, and a clear violation of international law by Iran,” he said, adding that London was working with partners on a “concrete response.”
Israel’s Bennett accused Tehran of “trying to shirk responsibility” for the attack. “I declare unequivocally: Iran is the one that carried out the attack on the ship,” he said.
The attack took place in open, international waters at a point about 280 kilometers (175 miles) off the coast of Oman.
The only connection with Israel is that the British-based ship management firm Zodiac Maritime is owned by Eyal Ofer, an Israeli citizen ranked by Forbes as the 197th wealthiest person in the world. But the ship management firm would not lose anything as a result of the attack—unless the attacker was surmising that foreign ship owners would be less likely to hire Zodiac Maritime after such an attack.
The damaged ship is a product tanker—that is, it carried petroleum products, not crude oil. But it was empty at the time of the attack. It was sailing from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to Fujairah in the UAE.
While the Islamic Republic officially denied any link to the attack, Al-Alam TV, which is Iranian state broadcasting’s Arabic language outlet, quoted unnamed sources as saying Iran had launched the attack in retaliation for an air strike on a base in Syria used by Iran’s Pasdaran.
The Israeli news website Ynet said the ship was attacked twice, spaced several hours apart. It said the first hit caused no damage, while the second killed the two men.
A few days later, the radioman on a Panamanian-flagged asphalt tanker Asphalt Princess radioed the Omani Coast Guard that “five or six Iranians” had come aboard the ship with weapons. His transmission was later stopped. US and Omani ships chased after the tanker as it sailed toward Iran. The ship then stopped. News reports later said the crew on the ship had disabled its engine so it had no power and the men who had seized the ship then left and returned to their own boat. The US and Omani naval vessels then escorted the tanker to Oman. Iran denied any role.
Meanwhile, Iranian First Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri said August 2 that the United States and Israel had attacked and damaged 12 Iranian oil tankers during the Trump Administration, suggesting there have been no attacks since Joe Biden became president in January. It was the first such accounting by Iran although news reports have spoken of about a dozen attacks on Iranian ships launched by Israel.
The reference to Trump suggested that the Biden Administration had told Israel it did not approve of such attacks.
The day after Jahangiri spoke, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Iran attacked at least five ships in the last year. He didn’t say how many were Israeli.