November 19, 2021
The Islamic Republic claims it confronted the US Navy last month in the Gulf of Oman, a confrontation it “won” by seizing back a tanker loaded with Iranian oil the Americans had just “stolen” from Iran.
The regime initially implied in its announcements that it had simply seized an Iranian ship—though it never said that outright, many Iranian news outlets said the seized ship was owned by Iran. However, the Vietnamese government said it owned the seized ship, MV Sothys. And a video of the confrontation with the US posted by the Pasdaran shows the ship it boarded with armed troops had the name Sothys printed in huge letters on its aft end.
The Vietnamese government said it had been talking to the Iranian Foreign Ministry in an effort to free the ship and the crude oil on board.
After holding the ship 17 days, foreign ship tracking services noted that the Sothys was sailing away from Iran November 10. The Pasdaran then announced they had freed the ship—but kept the cargo—after receiving a “court order” to do so. The Pasdaran did not name the court or explain why it was ordered to free the vessel. Vietnam confirmed it had heard from the crew that they were sailing home.
The Pasdaran have painted a picture of the incident as a major confrontation between it and the US Navy from which the Pasdaran have emerged victorious after foiling the wily plots of the Americans. Since the incident was revealed, the Iranian news media have almost daily run paeans extolling the greatness of the Islamic Republic and screeds demeaning the United States as a fading military power. For example, Pasdar Deputy Commander Brig. Gen. Yadollah Javani said the US “failed effort at piracy” was “another defeat” for the US and “another honor” for the Islamic Republic.
As related by the Pasdaran, the Americans hijacked an Iranian tanker, which the Pasdaran have not so far named. The Americans then proceeded to transfer all the crude from the unnamed Iranian tanker to another ship. The Pasdaran then came rushing to the scene. It described what followed as a display of great military skill in which Pasdar troops rappelled from a helicopter onto the deck of the second tanker (rappelling has become an element of military skill the Pasdaran glory in displaying) and then deployed throughout the ship, with weapons held menacingly.
The Pasdar video showed the Pasdar troops with automatic weapons raised as they walked menacingly along the deck, to the dismay of some Vietnamese seamen. The fact that the Pasdaran sent a videographer along with the boarding party was interesting and suggested the Pasdaran planned in advance to make a dramatic display of the incident for the public.
The Pasdar said the Americans then sent two guided missile destroyers to the scene to reclaim the tanker and its cargo. But the Pasdaran say they deployed their small speedboats to block the Americans and prevent them from getting to the tanker they had just seized. The video shows the US ships very close to the Sothys with several Pasdar speedboats racing around in the water.
The US government said the Pasdar description was nonsense. It said the US Navy was not involved in any confrontation with the Pasdaran, shooting or otherwise. What happened, it said, was that Iran seized a Vietnamese-flagged oil tanker, and the two US warships were ordered to the scene to monitor what was going on, but not to intervene.
It said the Pasdar speedboats did not harass the US ships. One official told The New York Times the Iranian boats were just engaged in some “sporty activity,” a term never previously used by the US when Iranian boats got as close to US ships.
Small Pasdar speedboats, however, are not capable of “blocking” destroyers. No weapons were fired, so the US Navy clearly did not try to take the Vietnamese tanker under its control. No one has yet said why, but the most likely explanation is that the Vietnamese skipper did not request any aid. Without that, the US Navy had no authority to intervene.
The US said this all occurred October 24, but the Pasdaran did not release its video until 11 days later, on November 4, seemingly to coincide with the annual celebration of the 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran.
For years, the Persian Gulf has been the sole assigned area of operation for the Pasdar maritime arm, while the regular Navy operates beyond the Strait of Hormuz. In recent months, however, the Pasdaran have been stationing some of their craft in the Gulf of Oman, although the government has not announced any change in the old division between the Pasdaran and the regular Navy.
According to the Tehran Times, “The naval forces of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) have launched a daring operation to protect Iran’s oil export after American forces confiscated a giant Iranian oil tanker in the Sea of Oman and transshipped its oil shipment to another oil tanker.”
The Pasdar media office confirmed the encounter and said the oil tanker had docked at Bandar Abbas. The statement described the US move as “robbery.”
Iran did not identify the ship it seized as Vietnam’s Sothys for several days, until after it released the video that revealed the name Sothys on the tanker.
A shipping database showed the Sothys’s registered owner as OPEC Petrol Transportation Co., a firm with a Hanoi address. The Sothys is a relatively small crude tanker with a gross tonnage of 58,000.
The Sothys has been on the radar of United Against a Nuclear Iran, a New York-based advocacy group long critical of the Islamic Republic. In a letter dated October 11 addressed to the Vietnam Maritime Administration, the group said its analysis of satellite photos showed the Sothys received a ship-to-ship transfer of oil in June from an oil tanker called the Oman Pride.
Tanker Trackers reported that the Sothys then sailed to a small port in China, Longkou, but was not allowed to unload its cargo. While China is believed importing some Iranian crude, often listed as from Iraq or some other origin, it occasionally rejects a cargo in an apparent effort to convince the Americans that it is abiding by sanctions.
The US Treasury identified the Oman Pride in August as being used to transport Iranian oil as part of a smuggling scheme to enrich the Qods Force. That Iranian oil is often transferred at sea to other tankers and ends up being sold in East Asia, the Treasury said, without the oil being identified as Iranian.
The New York Times quoted two unnamed Iranian sources as saying that the seized ship was one of the four tankers the US stopped and unloaded in the Atlantic last year, accusing them of carrying Iranian oil to Venezuela. The pair said Iran had been waiting ever since for those tankers to sail near Iran so they could be seized back. But the tankers the US halted were identified at the time as Greek-owned, not Iranian. After The New York Times story appeared, the Pentagon denied that the tanker seized by Iran had been among those involved in the Atlantic episode last year.
What appears to have happened was that Iran loaded oil last summer on the Oman Pride, which then transferred it at sea to the Sothys, which then sailed to China, but was not allowed to offload its cargo. The Sothys then sailed back to the Middle East, where the Pasdaran concocted its seizure scheme for some purpose yet to be fathomed.
