SEOUL (AP) – Armed troops of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard stormed a South Korean oil tanker and forced the ship to change course and travel to Iran, the ship’s owner said on Tuesday, Tehran’s latest sea capture in the middle of tensions with the West over its nuclear program.
The military raid on Monday against MT Hankuk Chemi was at odds with Iranian explanations that stopped the ship for polluting the waters of the Persian Gulf and the Oormuz Strait. Instead, it appeared that the Islamic Republic was trying to increase its leverage over Seoul ahead of negotiations on billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets in South Korean banks amid a US pressure campaign targeting Iran. .
An Iranian government spokesman, when asked on Tuesday about the confiscation, offered Tehran’s strongest recognition of a link to the frozen assets.
“If anyone is to be called hostage-taking, it is the South Korean government that has taken our more than $ 7 billion in hostages under a useless pretext,” spokesman Ali Rabiei said.
Iran also began enriching uranium by up to 20% on Monday, a small technical step of 90% armament levels, in its underground installation of Fordo. This move appeared aimed at putting pressure on the US in the last days of President Donald Trump’s administration, which unilaterally withdrew from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
Later Tuesday, comments from the head of Iran’s civilian nuclear program suggested that Tehran’s current 20% enriched uranium production would not reach the levels needed for a nuclear weapon for more than two years, which could give time for the negotiations of President-elect Joe Biden.
An official of DM Shipping Co.Ltd. De Busan, South Korea, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity as he was not allowed to speak to reporters, offered details of Hankuk Chemi’s confiscation. The ship was traveling from Jubail, Saudi Arabia, to Fujairah, UAE, when Iranian forces arrived at the ship and said they would embark it.
Initially, Iranian forces said they wanted to conduct an unspecified check on the ship, the official said. While the ship’s captain was talking to company security officials in South Korea, Iranian armed troops stormed the tanker while an Iranian helicopter flew overhead, the official said. Troops demanded the captain navigate the tanker into Iranian waters for an unspecified investigation and refused to explain themselves, the official added.
Since then, the company has been unable to reach the captain, the official said. The security cameras installed on the ship that initially transmitted images at the deck site to the company are now off, the official said.
After the company lost contact with the captain, the company received a security alert warning against piracy, which suggested the captain activate an on-board alert system, the official said. It is not yet clear if the ship tried to ask for outside help.
The fifth U.S. Navy fleet, based in the West, regularly patrols the area along with a U.S.-led coalition that controls the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf where it passes through the 20th. % of world oil. It also operates an independent Europe-led effort.
The official denied that the ship had polluted the waters.
In recent months, Iran has tried to increase pressure on South Korea to unblock some $ 7 billion in frozen assets from oil sales obtained before the Trump administration tightened sanctions on the country’s oil exports.
The head of Iran’s central bank recently announced that the country was looking to use linked funds at a South Korean bank to buy coronavirus vaccines through COVAX, an international program designed to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to participating countries.
The South Korean Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that it plans to send a delegation of officers to Iran for talks on the security of the early release of the ship and its crew members. The crew included sailors from Indonesia, Myanmar, South Korea and Vietnam, according to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The South Korean Defense Ministry said it was sending its anti-piracy unit near the Strait of Hormuz, a 4,400-ton class destroyer with about 300 troops.
South Korea’s presidential office said Tuesday it considers Iran’s ship seizure “very serious.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Choi Young-sam said Iranian officials have assured South Korea that the ship’s crew was safe. He said a South Korean diplomat based in Iran has been sent to the location of the detained ship.
The U.S. State Department has joined South Korea in demanding the immediate release of the tank, accusing Iran of threatening “freedoms and rights of navigation” in the Persian Gulf to “extort the international community to alleviate the pressure from sanctions “.
Last year, Iran also seized a British-flagged tanker and held it for months after one of its tankers was arrested off Gibraltar.
Meanwhile, in Tehran, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran told state television that current production of 20% enriched uranium from the Islamic Republic would be around 9 kilograms a month.
Ali Akbar Salehi’s comments mean that Iran would need more than two years at this rate to have the 240 kilograms (530 pounds) that experts say are needed to reprocess them to an armament level of 90%. . Salehi said Iran was also working to install newer, faster centrifuges at its facilities.
Also on Tuesday, the Iranian army began a two-day air exercise in the north of the country, state media reported, with unmanned combat and surveillance aircraft, as well as naval drones dispatched from ships in southern waters. of Iran. State television broadcast images of dozens of drones on a runway in Semnan province, in the far north, near the vast Kavir desert.
Iran has previously conducted drills with military drones; it habitually releases surveillance drone images of American aircraft carriers passing through the Persian Gulf. This week’s exercise also incorporates modern “suicide drones” gliding over a battlefield before plunging into a target, the television report reports.
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Gambrell reported from Dubai, UAE. Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran; and Isabel DeBre in Dubai contributed to this report.