DUBAI, UAE – An explosion on Friday struck an Israeli-owned cargo ship leaving the Middle East, an unexplained explosion that renewed ship security concerns in the region amid tensions they were rising between the US and Iran.
The crew and ship were safe, according to UK maritime trade operations, led by the British Navy. The explosion in the Gulf of Oman forced the ship to head to the nearest port.
The incident was reminiscent of the summer of 2019, when the same site saw a series of suspicious attacks that the U.S. Navy blamed on Iran, which Tehran denied. Meanwhile, as US President Joe Biden tries to revive nuclear talks with Iran, he ordered airstrikes overnight. in Syrian facilities belonging to a powerful Iraqi armed group backed by Iran.
Dryad Global, a maritime intelligence company, identified the affected vessel as the MV Helios Ray, a Bahamas-flagged and roll-up cargo vehicle. Another private security official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence issues, similarly identified the ship as the Helios Ray.
Satellite tracking data from the MarineTraffic.com website showed that the Helios Ray had been almost entering the Arabian Sea around 06:00 GMT on Friday before turning abruptly and starting to return to in the Strait of Hormuz. He came from Dammam, Saudi Arabia, and was still listed in Singapore as the destination of his tracker.
Israel’s Channel 13, in a report without sources, said the assessment in Israel is that Iran was behind the explosion. Israeli officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The blast comes as Tehran increasingly violates the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers to create leverage over Washington. Iran wants to pressure Biden to grant relief from the sanctions it received under the deal that former President Donald Trump abandoned nearly three years ago.
Iran has also blamed Israel for a recent series of attacks, including a mysterious explosion last summer that destroyed an advanced centrifuge assembly plant at its Natanz nuclear facility and the murder of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a leading Iranian scientist who founded the Islamic Republic ‘s military nuclear program two decades ago.
Captain Ranjith Raja of the data firm Refinitiv told the AP that the Israeli-owned ship had left the Persian Gulf on Thursday bound for Singapore. On Friday at 02:30 GMT, the ship stopped at least 9 hours east of a main port in Oman before making a 360-degree turn and sailing to Dubai, likely to assess the damage. and repair them, he said.
The ship was coming loaded with cargo from Europe. It unloaded vehicles at several ports in the region, Raja added, including Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, with its last port of call at Dammam.
Although details of the blast were still unclear, two U.S. defense officers told the AP that the ship had kept two holes on the port side and two holes on the starboard side just above the line. flotation to explosion. Officials said it was still unclear what caused the holes. They spoke with the AP on condition of anonymity to discuss unpublished information about the incidents.
A United Nations ship database identified the ship’s owners as a Tel Aviv-based company called Ray Shipping Ltd. Calls to Ray Shipping went unanswered on Friday.
Abraham Ungar, 74, who goes by “Rami,” is the founder of Ray Shipping Ltd. and is known as one of the richest men in Israel. He made a fortune in shipping and construction.
According to the Nikola Y. Vaptsarov Naval Academy, where Ungar offers maritime support and training, owns dozens of ships carrying cars and employs thousands of engineers.
Bahrain’s fifth fleet, based in Bahrain, said it was “aware and monitoring” the situation.
While the circumstances of the blast remain unclear, Dryad Global said it was very possible that the blast stemmed from “the asymmetric activity of the Iranian army.”
As Iran tries to pressure the United States to lift sanctions, the country may try to “exercise forceful diplomacy by military means,” Dryad reported. Iran did not immediately acknowledge the incident.
In the tense summer of 2019, the U.S. military blamed Iran for explosions on two oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most strategic waterways. The United States had also attributed a number of other alleged attacks to Iran, including the use of tape mines – designed to be magnetically attached to the hull of a ship – to paralyze four oil tankers off the nearby port of Fujairah in the United States. United Arab Emirates.
Since the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Fakhrizadeh last November, Israeli officials have sounded alarms about possible Iranian retaliation, including through their regional representatives such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
Over the years, Iran has been linked to attacks on Israeli and Jewish civilian targets in Latin America, Europe, and Asia. Israel has not commented on its alleged role in the scientist’s assassination.
Friday’s incident also follows normalization agreements between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The agreements, which received scathing criticism from Iran, consolidated an emerging regional alliance against the Islamic Republic.
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Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman in Tel Aviv, Israel, Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.