Iran said to seize British tanker in Persian Gulf

Iran said Friday it had seized a British oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, and the tanker’s owner said it had lost contact with the vessel as it appeared to be heading toward Iran. The British government said it was urgently seeking information about the incident.

The possible seizure of the ship, the Stena Impero, in the Strait of Hormuz, was the latest episode in three months of escalating tensions between Iran and the West. It came a day after the United States said it had downed an Iranian drone in the area, which the Iranians denied.

There were also unconfirmed reports Friday that a second British-owned tanker may have been seized.

Britain and Iran have been embroiled in a dispute for the past few weeks over Britain’s seizure of an Iranian tanker near Gibraltar. Iran had vowed to retaliate.

Iran’s Fars News Agency said the Stena Impero had been impounded because it was “violating maritime rules and regulations.”

The ship’s owners issued a statement that the Stena Impero had been “approached by unidentified small crafts and a helicopter during transit of the Strait of Hormuz while the vessel was in international waters.”

“We are presently unable to contact the vessel which is now heading north toward Iran,” the owners, Stena Bulk, and the ship’s managers, Northern Marine, said in the statement.

The British Defence Ministry said it was urgently looking into what had happened to the Stena Impero, a 30,000-ton British-flagged ship, which was heading for Saudi Arabia when it abruptly left the international sea lanes through the Strait of Hormuz.

Earlier Friday, Iranian officials denied the US military had downed an Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz, a day after President Donald Trump and Pentagon officials first made that announcement.

A spokesman for the Iranian Armed Forces said the “unfounded claim” had been intended to increase tensions in the Persian Gulf, according to Tasnim, an official Iranian news agency.

The Strait of Hormuz has been the focal point of increasing tensions between Iran and the United States in recent months, after a series of incidents in the waterway, a narrow stretch through which a fifth of the world’s supply of oil flows.

c.2019 New York Times News Service