A7: Iran is behind an attack on an oil tanker that “threatens international peace” | Shipping News

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Tehran denies responsibility for a drone attack on an oil tanker linked to Israel, but the G7 says “all available evidence clearly points to Iran”.

The G7 foreign ministers said “all available evidence clearly points to Iran” behind a July 29 drone attack on an oil tanker linked to Israel that killed a former British soldier and a Romanian national.

“This was a premeditated and targeted attack in clear violation of international law,” ministers from the world’s seven most developed countries said in a statement on Friday. “There is no justification for this attack.”

The vessel was a Liberian-flagged Japanese petroleum products tanker operated by the Israeli company Zodiac Maritime.

Iran has vehemently denied having any connection to the attack on MV Mercer Street, which came with rising tensions in the region and talks to revive a 2015 deal over Iran’s stalled nuclear programme.

But European countries and the United States renewed their accusations at a closed-door meeting of the Security Council at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Friday.

The UK knows that Iran was responsible for this attack. “We know it was deliberate and targeted,” British Ambassador to the United Nations Barbara Woodward said, adding that the evidence was “conclusive”.

The door for diplomacy and dialogue is still open. But if Iran chooses not to take this path, we will seek to hold Iran accountable and impose a cost for it.

The Security Council is scheduled to discuss the incident in more detail at an open session on maritime security on Monday.

“Ships must be allowed to sail freely in accordance with international law,” the G7 ministers said, promising “to do everything we can to protect all shipments on which the global economy depends.”

They said that “Iran’s behavior, along with its support for proxy forces and non-state armed actors, threatens international peace and security,” and called on Tehran to stop all activities that contravene Security Council resolutions.

‘Iran will not hesitate to defend itself’

The United States and Israel have accused Iran of being behind the attack on the tanker, which is run by a prominent Israeli businessman in London.

Iran’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Zahra Ershadi, rejected accusations that Tehran was behind the attack and warned of any retaliation: “Iran will not hesitate to defend itself and secure its national interests.”

In a separate statement, the US military said explosives experts from the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan — deployed to assist Mercer Street — concluded that the drone was produced in Iran.

It said explosives experts were able to recover several pieces of a drone, including part of the wing and internal components that it said were nearly identical to samples previously collected for Iranian attack drones.

The US military also indicated that the attack may have been launched from the Iranian coast, saying that the distance to the attack sites “was within the range of Iran’s documented one-way aircraft.”

“Some of the materials were transferred to the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet in Manama, Bahrain, and then to a US national laboratory for further testing and verification,” Central Command, which oversees US forces in the region, said in the statement.

Security analysts said the deadly attack raised the stakes in a “shadow war” against ships linked to Iran and Israel.

On Tuesday, Iran was again blamed for the alleged hijacking of an asphalt and asphalt tanker in the Gulf of Oman, which led to further denials by the Islamic Republic.

The tensions come as a hard-line former judiciary chief, Ebrahim Raisi, took office this week after winning the June elections, replacing Hassan Rouhani who was seen as a more moderate figure.

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