US, UK turn up heat on Iran for tanker attack

The US and UK have joined Israel in blaming Iran for last week's attack on an oil tanker off the coast of Oman in the northern Indian Ocean. Two crew members died in the incident, one of them a British national.

This piles the pressure on Tehran ahead of a pivotal week. President-elect Ebrahim Raisi will be inaugurated on 5 August.

"Upon review of the available information, we are confident that Iran conducted this attack, which killed two innocent people, using one-way [unmanned aerial vehicles] UAVs, a lethal capability it is increasingly employing throughout the region," US secretary of state Anthony Blinken said late on 1 August. "There is no justification for this attack, which follows a pattern of attacks and other belligerent behavior."

Blinken's UK counterpart, Dominic Raab, also pointed the finger at Iran for the attack, which he said was "deliberate, targeted and a clear violation of international law." The UK's assessments concluded "that it is highly likely that Iran attacked the MV Mercer Street… using one or more UAVs," Raab said.

The 29 July attack on the Japanese-owned product tanker Mercer Street was described by its management company Zodiac Maritime as an "onboard piracy incident." Zodiac Maritime is part of the Ofer Global conglomerate, which is owned by Israeli billionaire real estate and shipping magnate Eyal Ofer.

The tanker, which had no cargo on board, was heading from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to the UAE's main oil and products storage hub of Fujairah. It departed Dar es Salaam on 20 July and was to arrive in Fujairah today, according to Vortexa.

The statements from Washington and London came just hours after Iran's foreign ministry spokesman denied outright allegations made by Tel Aviv in the immediate aftermath of the attack that Iran was to blame.

"The illegitimate existence of the occupying regime in Jerusalem must stop making false accusations against Iran," Saeed Khatibzadeh said yesterday.

Israel's prime minister Naftali Bennett responded directly to these claims by saying "with absolute certainty: Iran carried out the attack against the ship."

First casualties of the soft war

This latest incident is the first in the number of attacks in the region to result in casualties. Zodiac Maritime said a Romanian national and British national died.

The US and UK said yesterday that they are working with their international partners on a response that Blinken said would "be forthcoming". Neither side, nor Israel, have offered any evidence or intelligence to back its allegations against Tehran.

For its part, Iran's foreign ministry described these latest accusations as a "trap" that Tehran "must not fall into" — a warning likely directed at the incoming Raisi administration. Among the most pressing items in his government's in-tray will be the resumption of discussions to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal that could ultimately lift economic sanctions on Iran's key banking and oil sectors.

Iran and the US concluded a sixth round of discussions in Vienna in mid-June. But the talks were put on ice temporarily by the Iranian side to allow for the incoming Raisi administration to take office.

Raisi has said that he supports a return to the JCPOA but would not be willing to negotiate with the US over other areas of contention like Tehran's regional activities or its ballistic missiles programme — issues the US has said it would want follow-up discussions on after a mutual return to the JCPOA is agreed.

Comments by Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week, denouncing the US and the west as untrustworthy and saying that the Raisi administration should "learn" from the outgoing government's experience of engaging with them, may signal a possible hardening of Tehran's approach to the talks under Raisi.

By Nader Itayim