Iran on Monday denied any connection to a deadly assault last week on a tanker with ties to Israel, Japan, and the U.k. while also acting to justify retribution for what it describes as Israeli and U.S. raids for the duration of then-President Donald Trump‘s administration on its personal ships.
“Trump and his team stood to save us from selling even one barrel of oil,” Iran’s first vice president, Eshaq Jahangiri, stated at an assembly of high-profile Iranian officers on Monday morning. “They exploded or damaged 12 of our oil tankers. The Israelis stepped onto one of all our oil tankers and exploded it. “
Jahangiri offered little evidence for the claims, which were carried by Iranian national information service Fars in a post that repeated denials of involvement in the assault on the tanker Mercer, close to the coast of Oman on Thursday. U.S. and Israeli officials have attributed the assault to a one-manner drone, which Iran has used with increasing frequency in recent months.
The U.S. and Israel are considering “next steps.”
The Mercer Avenue is Liberian-flagged, owned by a Japanese organization, and is managed by a British business enterprise that is owned by an Israeli billionaire. A Romanian national and a British national reportedly died in the attack.
In addition to the new sanctions against Iran, The Wall Street Journal mentioned on Sunday that the U.S. retribution will focus on Iran’s use of drones and missiles for precision strikes. Its proxy forces in Iraq have conducted a couple of attacks in opposition to U.S. forces based there in recent months.
Israel’s top Minister, Naftali Bennett, tweeted over the weekend that his authorities have absolute evidence that Iran was at the back of the attack.
“Yet again, we see that Iran threatens peace everywhere in the world,” Bennett wrote. “The greater we stand collectively to confront Iranian aggression, the greater effective we are able to be in placing and giving up to it.”
Blinken‘s assertion became unusually forceful for a reliable in the Biden administration, which has prioritized diplomatic engagement with Tehran because it seeks to repair the 2015 deal restricting Iran’s nuclear applications, from which Trump unilaterally withdrew.
“There’s no justification for this attack, which follows a pattern of attacks and other belligerent behavior,” Blinken stated. “These actions threaten freedom of navigation through this important waterway, global shipping and trade, and the lives of those on the vessels involved.”
Iran believes it has been unnecessarily provoked by the U.S. and its allies. Jahangiri, in his remarks Monday morning, referenced an April incident wherein the Savitz, an apparent “undercover agent ship” employed by the Islamic Innovative Guard Corps, was damaged by an explosion inside the Red Sea. Reporting at the time indicated Israel had instructed the U.S. to be at the back of the assault.
A spokesman for Iran’s overseas ministry referred to as Israel’s contemporary claims approximately Mercer street to be “childish.”
“The officers of the Zionist regime have to recognize that they can not cure their pain with such blame games,” Saeed Khatibzadeh said Sunday.
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