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, Iranian state television acknowledged on Wednesday.
The state TV recognition, with reference to foreign media, is the first Iranian comment on the mysterious incident on Tuesday with the MV Saviz, which was allegedly carried out by Israel. The attack took place when Iran and world powers settled in Vienna for the first talks on the US possibly rejoining Tehran’s shattered nuclear deal, showing that the challenges ahead do not lie solely in those 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 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.
In the state TV statement, an anchor quoted a New York Times story, quoting an anonymous US official who told the newspaper that Israel had informed America that it had carried out an attack on the vessel on Tuesday morning. 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.
Iran’s semi-official news agency Tasnim, which is believed to be near the guard, reported the attack late Tuesday, saying explosives planted on the hull of the Saviz had exploded. 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 blaming the US Navy on 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 Natanz nuclear facility. Another murder 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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