TEHRAN: Iranian forces boarded a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf after patrol boats fired warning shots across its bow and ordered it deeper into Iranian waters, the Pentagon said.
US planes and a destroyer were monitoring the situation after the vessel, the MV Maersk Tigris, made a distress call in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important oil shipping channels.
Iran’s Tasnim news agency quoted an unidentified source who sought to play down the incident, saying it was a civil matter with no military or political dimension.
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However, the Pentagon said it appeared to be a “provocative” act, but that US officials did not have all the facts surrounding the incident.
The incident came as the US and five other global powers aim to secure a final nuclear deal with Iran by the end of June.
Under the accord, Tehran, which denies seeking to build nuclear weapons, would win sanctions relief, in return for slashing the number of its uranium enrichment centrifuges and accepting international inspections.
Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television earlier said an Iranian force fired on and seized a US cargo ship with 34 US sailors on board, and directed it to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.
A Pentagon spokesman said there were no US citizens on board the ship.
The company managing the vessel told a Danish news channel it had 24 crew members, mostly from eastern Europe and Asia.
Tracking data showed the Maersk Tigris, a 65,000-tonne container ship, off the Iranian coast between the islands of Qeshm and Hormuz. It had been listed as sailing from the Saudi port of Jeddah and bound for the United Arab Emirates port of Jebel Ali.
Court order
Iran’s Fars news agency said the ship was seized at the request of Iran’s ports authority under a court order.
But a spokesman for the Singapore-based company that manages the vessel, Rickmers Shipmanagement, said he did not know why Iran had taken action.
Spokesman Cor Radings confirmed to Danish TV2 news channel that Iranian forces fired warning shots at the container ship and boarded it, and said the company was concerned for the crew.
The vessel had been following a normal commercial route between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, he said.
A US government official said the ship was intercepted by the naval force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps at 9.05am GMT.
Another US official said that when the warning shots were fired, the Maersk Tigris issued a distress call which was received by US forces operating in the region.
The official said that the closest US warship was more than 60km away, and the US military instructed the destroyer USS Farragut to head towards the cargo ship.
Some 17 million barrels per day, or about 30 per cent of all seaborne-traded oil, passed through the channel in 2013, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Iran has in the past threatened to block the strait to advance its opposition to sanctions imposed over its nuclear programme.
The strait is a narrow strip of water separating Oman and Iran. It connects the biggest Gulf oil producers, such as Saudi Arabia, with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.
