JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday accused Iran of attacking an Israeli-owned ship in the Gulf of Oman last week, a mysterious explosion that further heightened security concerns in the region.
Without offering any proof of his claim, Netanyahu told Israeli public broadcaster Kan that “it was an act performed by Iran, of course.”
“Iran is Israel’s biggest enemy, I am determined to stop it. We are hitting the whole region, ”Netanyahu said. Iran quickly dismissed the charges.
The blast hit the Israeli-owned MV Helios Ray, a Bahamas-flagged, rolling and rolling cargo ship, as it left the Middle East for Singapore on Friday. The crew was unharmed, but the ship maintained two holes on the port side and two on the starboard side, just above the waterline, according to U.S. defense officials.
The ship arrived in Dubai port for repairs on Sunday, days after the blast that rekindled security concerns on Middle East waterways amid tensions with Iran.
Iran has tried to pressure the US to lift sanctions on Tehran, as the administration of President Joe Biden is considering the option of returning to negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. Biden has repeatedly said the U.S. would return to the nuclear deal between Tehran and the world powers that his predecessor, Donald Trump, withdrew in 2018 only after Iran restored full compliance with the deal.
The explosion of the Israeli-owned ship last week recalled the tense summer of 2019, when the U.S. military accused Iran of attacking several oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman with tape mines, designed to be fixed. magnetically to the hull of the ship. The Gulf of Oman leads through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital passage for the world’s oil supply. Tehran has denied allegations that it was behind the tape mine attacks.
It is still unclear what caused Friday’s explosion at Lightning Helios. The ship had unloaded cars at several ports in the Persian Gulf before the explosion forced it to reverse course. Over the weekend, the Israeli defense minister and army chief had indicated that they blamed Iran for what they said was an attack on the ship.
Iran responded to Netanyahu’s statement by saying it “firmly rejected” the claim behind the attack. At a news conference, Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said Netanyahu was “suffering from an obsession with Iran” and described his charges as “falsehood of fear.”
Khatibzadeh also accused Israel of having taken “suspicious actions in the region” against Iran in recent months to undermine the 2015 nuclear deal, without detailing it, and promised that Iran would respond.
“Israel knows very well that our response in the field of national security has always been fierce and accurate,” he said.
Overnight, Syrian state media reported a series of alleged Israeli airstrikes near Damascus, saying air defense systems had intercepted most of the missiles. Israeli media said the alleged airstrikes were aimed at Iranian targets in response to the ship’s attack.
Israel has achieved hundreds of Iranian targets in neighboring Syria in recent years and Netanyahu has repeatedly said that Israel will not accept a permanent Iranian military presence there. Iran and its Lebanese representative Hezbollah have provided military support to Syrian President Bashar Assad in the Syrian civil war of more than ten years.
The Israeli military rejected comments.
Iran has also blamed Israel for a recent series of attacks, including another mysterious blast last summer that destroyed an advanced centrifuge assembly plant at its Natanz nuclear facility and the Mohsen assassination. Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian scientist who founded the Islamic Republic’s military nuclear program. decades ago. Iran has repeatedly vowed to avenge the assassination of Fakhrizadeh.
“The most important thing is that Iran does not have nuclear weapons, with or without an agreement, that’s what I also told my friend Biden,” Netanyahu said Monday.
Iranian threats of retaliation have raised alarms in Israel since the signing of normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in September.
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Associated Press writers Isabel DeBre in Dubai, UAE, and Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.