Earlier today the navy of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp boarded and seized the container ship MSC Aries near the Strait of Hormuz. The ship is operated by Zodiac Maritime, a company owned by the Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer.
The seizure of the ship can be understood as a warning to the U.S. and its Gulf allies to not get any funny ideas and to attack Iran. A closure of the Strait of Hormuz would increase global oil prices and jeopardize Biden's re-election.
Iran has announced to revenge the Israeli attack on its embassy building in Damascus, Syria.
But it did not announce when, where or how it will retaliate.
By holding back on any hints it increases the anxiety in Israel and Washington DC.
“The pressure is now on Israel and the US rather than Iran. And yes, there are a lot of threatening remarks directed at Iran in the hope that the Iranians don’t act. But the die was first cast by Israel,” said Vali Nasr, a professor of international affairs at John Hopkins University. “And now people are trying to avoid what might be consequences.”
Biden does not want the US to be pulled into a war with Iran, particularly as he seeks reelection in November. But Washington’s default policy has long been to support Israel, Nasr added.
Would a real superpower ever do this (archived)?
The US has asked China and other countries, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, to urge Tehran not to launch a retaliatory attack on Israel for its air strike on the Iranian consulate in Syria. Neither of the countries asked has any reason to be helpful to the U.S. and certainly not to Israel.
The costs of keeping the watch up and the weapons manned will over time become unbearable for Israel as well as for the U.S.
It is thus better for Iran to wait with any bigger retaliation it may plan to carry out.
Posted by b on April 13, 2024 at 13:30 UTC
Ref: The Cradle: IRGC commandos seize Israel-linked ship in Gulf waters
Iran's semi-official Tasnim News Agency reported on 13 April that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) navy seized an Israeli-linked cargo ship in the Persian Gulf region.
Earlier, AP reported that a regional defense official shared with them a video of the attack, which targeted the Portuguese-flagged MSC Aries, a container ship owned by Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer’s Zodiac Group.
The MSC Aries had been last located off Dubai, heading toward the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, and had turned off its tracking data, a practice common for Israeli ships in the region.
Since November, the Ansarallah-led Yemeni armed forces have targeted Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Iran and Yemen are close allies.
Friday's ship seizure had previously been reported by the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations. The report said only that a ship was being “seized by regional authorities” in the Gulf of Oman off the Emirati port city of Fujairah.
The seizure comes as fears grow in Israel and the US over Iran's retaliation for the bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria. Israel killed a top Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) commander and several others in the strike.
The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow channel in the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil passes. Fujairah, on the UAE’s eastern coast in the Gulf of Oman, is the region's main port.
The UAE plays a crucial role in US and Israeli plans to establish the India Middle East Europe Economic Corridors (IMEC), a ship-to-rail transit network that could compete with China’s Belt and Road project to ship goods from Asia to Europe.
Iranian targeting of commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman could disrupt the establishment of the IMEC project.