2024-01-11 23:57:21
The oil tanker St. Nicholas, which Iran announced was captured in the Gulf of Oman on the 11th. This photo was taken in Tokyo Bay, Japan in October 2020. /Archyde.com (provided by Daisuke Nimura)
On the 11th, when Iran claimed to have captured an American oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman, the White House said, “We condemn this seizure.” “The Iranian government must immediately release the ship and its crew,” he said. John Kirby, strategic communications coordinator for the White House National Security Council, said at a White House briefing that day, “These provocative and unacceptable actions must stop. “We will continue to work with our allies, partners, and the international community to deter and address all troubling and destabilizing actions by Iran.”
Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on this day that the Iranian Navy captured the US oil tanker ‘Saint Nicholas’ in the waters of the Gulf of Oman, suspected of smuggling Iranian oil to the US under an order from an Iranian court. U.S. authorities also confirmed that Iran had captured the oil tanker. This oil tanker is owned by an American investment company, but because the shipment is to the Marshall Islands, the United States does not use the expression ‘American tanker’. It is reported that the operation of the oil tanker is being handled by a Greek company.
This tanker was detained by the U.S. Department of Justice in April last year on charges of participating in Iranian crude oil trading. At the time, the oil tanker named ‘Suez Rajan’ was carrying 800,000 barrels of crude oil worth 56 million dollars (about 73.6 billion won). The U.S. Department of Justice judged that the ship violated independent U.S. sanctions banning trade in Iranian crude oil and indicted the shipping company in a Washington DC court. The company pleaded guilty and the crude oil sales proceeds were confiscated by the U.S. government.
The oil tanker, which was later renamed and operated as ‘Saint Nicholas’, was anchored in the sea near Basra, Iraq, to load crude oil to be transported to the Turkiye Oil Refinery, and was captured on its way to Iran, foreign media such as AP reported. This incident is expected to further increase tensions between Iran and the United States. On the 9th, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, supported by Iran, attacked a merchant ship passing through the Red Sea with missiles and drones, provoking a counterattack by the U.S. Central Command.
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