DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – An Iranian cargo ship believed to be a base for the paramilitary revolutionary guard and anchored in the Red Sea off Yemen for years has been attacked, Tehran admitted on Wednesday.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry has confirmed the attack on MV Saviz, who was allegedly carried out by Israel. The assault took place when Iran and world powers sat down in Vienna for the first talks on the US that would possibly rejoin Tehran’s shattered nuclear deal, showing that the challenges ahead lie not only in the negotiations.
The ship’s long-standing presence in the region, which has been repeatedly criticized by Saudi Arabia, came as Western and United Nations experts said Iran had provided weapons and support to Yemen’s Houthi rebels amid the country’s years war. Iran denies arming the Houthis, although components found in the rebels’ weapons reconnect to Tehran.
Iran had earlier described the Saviz as an aid in ‘anti-piracy’ efforts in the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a major choking point in international shipping. Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh described the ship as a merchant vessel.
“Fortunately, no casualties have been reported … and technical investigations are underway,” Khatibzadeh said. “Our country will take all necessary measures through international authorities.”
In an earlier state TV statement, an anchor quoted a report from the New York Times, in which an anonymous US official was quoted as saying to the newspaper that Israel told America that he had an attack on the vessel has done. Israeli officials declined to comment on the incident when The Associated Press reported it, as did the owner of Saviz.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised Iran in a speech to his Likud party on Tuesday after being asked to form a government after the country’s recent election.
“We must not go back to the dangerous nuclear deal with Iran, because a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to the state of Israel and a major threat to the security of the entire world,” Netanyahu said.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called the talks in Vienna a “success” as he spoke to his cabinet on Wednesday.
“Today, one united statement is heard that all sides of the nuclear deal have come to the conclusion that there is no better solution than the agreement,” he said.
Iran’s semi-official news agency Tasnim, which is believed to be close to the guard, blamed the blast on explosives planted on Saviz’s hull. It blamed no one for the attack and said Iranian officials were likely to provide more information in the coming days.
In a statement, the U.S. Army Central Command said only that it was “aware of the media coverage of an incident involving the Saviz in the Red Sea.”
“We can confirm that no U.S. troops were involved in the incident,” the commando said. “We have no additional information to provide.”
The Saviz, owned by the state-affiliated Islamic Republic of Iran, arrived in the Red Sea at the end of 2016, according to ship tracking data. In the years that followed, it drifted away from the Dahlak archipelago, a chain of islands off the coast of the nearby African country of Eritrea in the Red Sea. It probably received replenishments and switched the crew via passing Iranian vessels using the waterway.
Information material from the Saudi army obtained earlier by the AP showed that men on the vessel were dressed in camouflage, military fatigue, as well as small boats that could transport cargo to the Yemeni coast. The information material also contains photographs showing a variety of antennas on the vessel that the Saudi government describes as unusual for a commercial cargo ship, indicating that it is electronically supervised. Other images showed the ship was mounted for 50-caliber machine guns.
The Washington Institute for Near-East Policy called the Saviz an “Iranian motherhood” in the region, and also described it as an intelligence-gathering base and a weapon for the guard. Policy documents of the institute do not explain how they came to the conclusion, although the analysts have regular access to the military resources of the Gulf and Israel.
The Saviz was under international sanctions until Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which saw Tehran receive economic relief in exchange for limiting its uranium enrichment. The Trump administration later renewed US sanctions against Saviz as part of its decision to unilaterally withdraw from the deal.
In June 2019, Saudi Arabia flew a critically ill Iranian from the Saviz after Tehran asked the United Nations for help.
Amid growing tensions between the US and Iran, a series of mysterious explosions have targeted ships in the region, including some accusing the US Navy of Iran. Among the ships recently damaged was a car carrier owned by Israel in an attack that Netanyahu accused of Iran. Another was an Iranian cargo ship in the Mediterranean.
Iran also blamed Israel for a recent series of attacks, including a mysterious explosion in July that destroyed an advanced centrifuge assembly plant at its nuclear facility in Natanz. Another is the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in November, a top Iranian scientist who founded the Islamic Republic’s military nuclear program two decades ago.
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Associated Press journalists Nasser Karimi and Mehdi Fattahi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
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