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Iranian media reported on Monday that the country’s elite Revolutionary Guards navy has seized a South Korean vessel “for polluting the Persian Gulf with chemicals”.
A South Korean-flagged tanker, the MT Hankuk Chemi, appears to have been seized by Iran and is now in Iranian territorial waters, two maritime security companies said.
Satellite data from MarineTraffic.com showed the MT Hankuk Chemi off the port of Bandar Abbas on Monday afternoon without explanation. It had been travelling from Saudi Arabia to Fujairah in the UAE. The ship’s owners could not be immediately reached for comment.
Meanwhile, Iran says it has resumed enriching uranium to up to 20 per cent purity, in a significant breach of the 2015 nuclear accord, amid tensions with the US in the final weeks of the Trump administration.
The move, which Iran told the UN nuclear watchdog about last week, was one of many mentioned in a law passed by Iran’s parliament last month in response to the killing of the country’s top nuclear scientist, which Tehran has blamed on Israel.
Iran started violating the accord in 2019 in retaliation for Washington’s withdrawal from the agreement and the reimposition of US sanctions against Tehran. The enrichment is taking place at the Fordow site, which was built inside a mountain, apparently to protect it from aerial bombardment. The 2015 deal does not allow enrichment there.
Sunday marked the first anniversary of a US drone strike that killed the top general Qassem Soleimani, and Washington has apparently been braced for possible retaliation.
‘Pretext for war’
After the US stepped up military deployments and threatening language, Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, accused it on New Year’s Eve of trying to set up a “pretext for war”.
On Sunday the US reversed a decision to bring an aircraft carrier home from the Persian Gulf, with the Pentagon saying that owing to “recent threats” by Iran the USS Nimitz would stay in position.
The Iran nuclear deal’s main aim was to extend the time needed to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb, if it chose to, to at least a year from approximately two to three months. It also lifted international sanctions against Tehran.
US intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency believe Iran had a secret, coordinated nuclear weapons programme that it halted in 2003. Iran denies ever having had one.
President-elect Joe Biden, who takes office on January 20th, has signalled that Washington would rejoin the so-called joint comprehensive plan of action aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear programme.
The deal has been unravelling since President Donald Trump withdrew from it in May 2018 and imposed crippling economic sanctions on Tehran. – Guardian