DUBAI, United Arab Emirates \u2014 A ship anchored off the United Arab Emirates was seized and taken toward Iran and another \u2014 a cargo ship near Oman \u2014 sank after being attacked, authorities said Thursday, as tensions escalated near the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t immediately clear who was behind these incidents, but they happened as a senior Iranian official reiterated his country\u2019s claim of control over the waterway and another said it had a right to seize oil tankers connected to the U.S.<\/p>\n
The turmoil in the strait, which a fifth of the world\u2019s oil passed through before the war, has been a sticking point for weeks in talks between the U.S. and Iran to end the conflict. Iran\u2019s grip on the vital waterway has jolted the world economy and spiked fuel prices far beyond the Middle East.<\/p>\n
The ongoing instability in the region comes as U.S. President Donald Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing. The White House said both sides had agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must remain open.<\/p>\n
Just last week, tensions flared in the strait when U.S. forces fired on and disabled Iranian oil tankers that it said were trying to breach its blockade of Iran\u2019s ports.<\/p>\n
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said it received reports that the ship seized Thursday was taken by unauthorized personnel while anchored 44 miles northeast of the UAE port of Fujairah, an important oil export terminal that has been repeatedly attacked during the war with Iran.<\/p>\n
The U.K. maritime center did not name the ship seized Thursday and said it is investigating. The British military said the vessel is heading toward Iranian waters.<\/p>\n
Indian authorities said Thursday that an Indian-flagged cargo ship sank off the coast of Oman after an attack sparked a fire aboard the vessel while it was en route from Somalia to Sharjah, another UAE port. They did not say who attacked the ship.<\/p>\n
The attack on the Indian-flagged cargo ship Haji Ali occurred Wednesday, according to Mukesh Mangal, a senior official in India\u2019s shipping ministry. He said all 14 Indian crew members were rescued by Oman\u2019s coast guard and were safe.<\/p>\n
India\u2019s foreign ministry called the incident \u201cunacceptable\u201d and condemned continued attacks on commercial shipping and civilian mariners. The ministry did not identify who carried out the attack.<\/p>\n
Iranian semiofficial news agencies reported that Chinese ships began passing through the strait Wednesday night under new Iranian protocols. According to the reports, Tehran agreed to facilitate the passage of several Chinese vessels after requests from China\u2019s foreign minister and Beijing\u2019s ambassador to Iran. The ships began their passage as Trump arrived in China.<\/p>\n
The seizure of a ship off the coast of the UAE happened hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he had quietly visited the country during the Israeli-U.S. war with Iran, though the UAE swiftly denied it.<\/p>\n
The Gulf nation normalized relations with Israel in 2020. Iran has criticized that agreement and has repeatedly suggested over the years that Israel maintained a military and intelligence presence in the UAE.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu\u2019s decision to go public with the sensitive meeting was likely an effort to drum up support for his flagging party ahead of Israeli elections, said Yoel Guzansky, a senior researcher at the Institute of National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s amazing, it\u2019s the deepest cooperation we\u2019ve ever had \u2026 that during a war, Israel is defending an Arab state against Iran. It shows how complicated the Middle East is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The UAE is trying to highlight its cooperation with Israel but not with Netanyahu and his government, Guzansky said, because many in the UAE are against Israel\u2019s policies in Gaza.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re trying to differentiate between security cooperation and cooperating with this government,\u201d said Guzansky, who previously worked for the national security council within the Israeli prime minister\u2019s office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUBAI, United Arab Emirates \u2014 A ship anchored off the United Arab Emirates was seized and taken toward…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[328,262,38,102,34,2440,42,261,101],"class_list":{"0":"post-114220","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-strait-of-hormuz","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-hormuz","12":"tag-iran","13":"tag-latest-headlines","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-oil-prices","16":"tag-strait-of-hormuz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116574946790084149","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}