SEOUL (AP) – Iranian Revolutionary Guard armed forces stormed a South Korean tanker, forcing the ship to change course and travel to Iran, the ship’s owner said Tuesday, the latest maritime seizure by Tehran amid elevated tensions with the West over its nuclear program.
The military raid on MT Hankuk Chemi on Monday was at odds with Iranian statements that they had stopped the ship for contamination of the waters of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, it seemed that the Islamic Republic wanted to increase its power over Seoul ahead of negotiating billions of dollars in Iranian assets frozen in South Korean banks amid a US campaign of pressure against Iran.
When a spokesman for the Iranian government was asked about the seizure on Tuesday, he offered Tehrans clashed acknowledgment so far of a link to the frozen assets.
“If anyone is to be called a hostage-taker, it is the South Korean government that has taken our more than $ 7 billion hostage under a futile pretext,” said spokesman Ali Rabiei.
Iran also started enriching uranium to 20% on Monday, a small technical step away from a weapon quality level of 90%, in the underground Fordo facility. That move seemed aimed at putting pressure on the US in the closing days of President Donald Trump’s administration, which unilaterally withdrew from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
Later on Tuesday, comments from the head of Iran’s civilian nuclear program suggested that Tehran’s current production of uranium enriched to 20% for more than two years would not reach the levels needed for a nuclear weapon, potentially leaving time for negotiations under the President-elect Joe Biden.
An official at DM Shipping Co. Ltd. from Busan, South Korea, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to journalists, gave details of the Hankuk Chemi seizure. The ship was en route from Jubail, Saudi Arabia, to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates when Iranian forces reached the ship and said they would board.
Initially, Iranian forces said they wanted to conduct an unspecified check on the ship, the official said. While the captain of the ship in South Korea spoke to company security officials, armed Iranian forces stormed the tanker as an Iranian helicopter flew over, the official said. The troops demanded that the captain sail the tanker into Iranian waters after an unspecified investigation and refused to explain themselves, the official added.
The company has not been able to reach the captain since then, the official said. Security cameras installed on the ship that initially relayed images of the scene on the deck to the company have now been disabled, the official said.
After the company lost contact with the captain, the company received a security warning against piracy, suggesting that the captain had activated an onboard warning system, the official said. It remains unclear whether the ship attempted to enlist outside help.
The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet routinely patrols the area along with an American-led coalition that guards the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of the world’s oil flows. A separate European-led effort is also active there.
The official denied that the ship had polluted the waters.
In recent months, Iran has been trying to increase pressure on South Korea to release about $ 7 billion in frozen assets from the oil sales earned before the Trump administration tightened sanctions on the country’s oil exports.
The chief of Iran’s central bank recently announced that the country wanted to use money trapped in a South Korean bank to purchase coronavirus vaccines through COVAX, an international program designed to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to participating countries.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that it plans to send a delegation of officials to Iran to discuss the early release of the ship and its crew. According to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the crew consisted of sailors from Indonesia, Myanmar, South Korea and Vietnam. South Korea’s Defense Ministry said it would send its anti-piracy unit to the Strait of Hormuz – a 4,400-ton destroyer with about 300 troops.
South Korea’s presidential office said on Tuesday that it considers the seizure of Iranian ships “very serious.”
State Department spokesman Choi Young-sam said Iranian officials assured South Korea that the ship’s crew were all safe. He said an Iran-based South Korean diplomat has been sent to the location of the detained ship.
The US State Department allied with South Korea, calling for the tanker’s immediate release, accusing Iran of threatening “navigation rights and freedoms” in the Persian Gulf in order to “extort the international community. to ease the pressure of sanctions “.
Last year, Iran similarly seized a British-flagged oil tanker and detained it for months after one of its tankers was detained off Gibraltar.
Meanwhile, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization in Tehran told state television that current production of 20% enriched uranium in the Islamic Republic would be around 9 kilograms (20 pounds) per month.
Ali Akbar Salehi’s comments mean that at that rate, it would take Iran more than two years to reprocess the 240 kilograms (530 pounds) experts say it takes to weapon quality levels of 90%. Salehi said Iran was also in the process of installing newer, faster centrifuges in its facilities.
Also Tuesday, the Iranian military began an extensive, two-day aerial exercise in the north of the country, state media reported, with unmanned combat and surveillance aircraft and navy drones dispatched from ships in Iran’s southern waters. State television broadcasts images of dozens of drones on a runway in the northern province of Semnan near the vast Kavir Desert.
Iran has previously conducted exercises with military drones; It routinely releases images of surveillance drones from US aircraft carriers cruising the Persian Gulf. This week’s exercise also features modern “suicide drones” hovering over a battlefield before diving towards a target, the TV report said.
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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press Writers Nasser Karimi and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran; and Isabel DeBre in Dubai contributed to this report.