The tanker war was an offshoot of the Iran-Iraq war that began in 1980 with Iraq\u2019s invasion of Iran. The conflict soon spread to the waters of the Persian Gulf as Iraq, and then Iran, targeted the other side’s oil facilities and shipping.<\/p>\n
By the mid 1980s Iraq, using French-supplied jets and anti-ship missiles, was targeting neutral vessels carrying Iranian oil, while Iran used naval frigates and speedboats to attack third-country tankers using Kuwaiti and Saudi Arabian ports. Both Arab countries were backing Iraq in the war.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of ships were attacked in the maritime conflict and\u00a0more than 100<\/a>\u00a0merchant sailors were killed.<\/p>\n Despite the risks, sailors were convinced to serve on tankers transiting the Persian Gulf in part by hazard pay, or danger money, that in some cases doubled their salaries for each day they spent in risky waters. Syvertsen said senior crewmen also felt an obligation to keep energy supplies moving through the vital waterway.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to do our duty because the ship owners told us that we had to hold the Hormuz Strait open and get energy out, otherwise the economy of the whole world would collapse,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Olav Myklebust worked as an engineer aboard ships plying the Persian Gulf through the 1980s and survived two attacks from Iraqi aircraft. During one of those strikes, off the coast of Dubai, an anti-ship missile narrowly missed his boat before slamming into a nearby vessel, killing several people inside the engine room. He still works today as an oil tanker manager.<\/p>\n The industry veteran said the same tactics ships used in the 1980s to avoid detection are probably being adopted by some of the vessels that\u00a0have transited the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>\u00a0in recent days.<\/p>\n Tankers in the gulf in the 1980s moved mostly under the cover of darkness, he said. \u201cNo lights, no lanterns,\u201d and all portholes of crew quarters blacked out. \u201cWe were hardly using the radar, only on and off, because that can give a signal to shore. So that is what they will do [today], they slip through.\u201d<\/p>\n Additionally, he said, ships may be switching off the\u00a0transponders<\/a>\u00a0used to avoid collisions since such devices also flag vessel locations to\u00a0maritime tracking websites.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The tanker war was an offshoot of the Iran-Iraq war that began in 1980 with Iraq\u2019s invasion of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[6786,24307,1567,24303,94,24304,35,876,971,24306,39,20516,24305,7396,101,392,709,153,736,73],"class_list":{"0":"post-64517","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iraq","8":"tag-arab-countries","9":"tag-arild-syvertsen","10":"tag-dubai","11":"tag-iran-iran-war-1980","12":"tag-iraq","13":"tag-iraqs-invasion-of-iran","14":"tag-kuwait","15":"tag-netanyahu","16":"tag-norway","17":"tag-olav-myklebust","18":"tag-persian-gulf","19":"tag-sailors","20":"tag-saudi-arab","21":"tag-sea-mines","22":"tag-strait-of-hormuz","23":"tag-trump","24":"tag-uae","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-us-navy","27":"tag-us-israel-war-on-iran"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116395164549522270","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64517","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=64517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}