The magazine gave no source for its report and there was no independent confirmation of the story, which many found hard to believe.
The newsmagazine reported that the plan was fashioned by Pasdar Commander Major General Mohammad-Ali Jafari. Codenamed “Muddy Water,” it begins with the Iranians steering a tanker onto rocks in the strait.
“The aim is to block shipping temporarily through the contamination, to ‘punish’ adjacent Arab states that are hostile to Iran and to force the West to take part in a large-scale cleanup of the waters—and possibly thereby a suspension of sanctions against Tehran,” Der Spiegel said.
“A decontamination would only be possible with technical help from the Iranian authorities and, for this, the embargo would have to be at least temporarily lifted,” the magazine said. “Iranian firms, some of them owned by the Pasdaran, could even profit from the rescue operations.”
Der Spiegel gave no source for its report but said Western intelligence services were studying the plan, which it said requires only the approval of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi to be put into effect.
Skeptics, however, pointed out that an oil spill doesn’t prevent ships from sailing through the area of the spill. And, if shipping were stopped, it would have a bigger impact on Iranian revenues because Iran is the only country bordering the Persian Gulf that must ship every barrel of its oil exports through the strait.
Der Spiegel portrayed the story as a scheme to block the strait without Iran taking obvious overt action, such as mining the waters or firing on shipping, which would guarantee retaliation. The scheme is supposedly premised on the assumption that countries would need Iran’s permission to clear the spill and that Iran could therefore demand that sanctions be lifted before it would grant that permission.
Skeptics also pointed out that the water flow through the strait is very swift and the possibility that the vast bulk of any oil spill would be swept out into the Arabian Sea is high.