Iranian authorities said they seized a foreign oil tanker near Iran’s Qeshm Island in the Persian Gulf with 4 million liters of suspected smuggled fuel on board, according to the IRGC’s news website.
The vessel was detained inside Iran’s territorial waters, the report said. Commander of the IRGC’s First Naval Zone, Brigadier General Abbas Gholamshahi, said 16 crew members — all non-Iranian nationals — were detained during the operation. He added the tanker was part of an organized fuel-smuggling network operating in the region and was planning to offload its cargo onto larger vessels outside the Persian Gulf.
Gholamshahi said the vessel and its crew had been handed over to judicial authorities, adding that the fate of the seized fuel will be determined in accordance with Iranian laws and regulations.
Iran’s Hormozgan provincial judiciary has said the crew remains in custody under criminal procedures, and that a case has been opened at the public and revolutionary prosecutor’s office in Qeshm. The judiciary estimated the combined value of the vessel and its cargo at about 700 billion tomans (about $5.2 million at an open-market rate of roughly 134,550 tomans per $1).
The vessel and cargo would be confiscated in favor of the state under Iran’s anti-smuggling law.
In late November, IRGC seized an Eswatini-flagged vessel carrying 350,000 liters of smuggled fuel. In a separate case unrelated to fuel smuggling in mid-November, the IRGC seized a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker outside Iran’s territorial waters after determining it was carrying an unauthorized petrochemical cargo belonging to Iran; the vessel, named Talara, was released a few days later after its cargo was offloaded.
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is a military institution established under Iranian law with separate branches, including naval forces.
Source: Port News
