The US military claims to have received a distress call: "Iranian military has fired multiple times." Army | Iran | distress call
According to Agence France Presse, the US Navy claims that Iran seized a merchant ship in international waters of the Persian Gulf on July 6th. The US Navy claimed the day before that it had prevented the Iranian military from detaining two oil tankers in the waters near Oman. On the 6th, Iran did not immediately respond to the US military's statement.
According to reports, the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, headquartered in Bahrain, stated in a statement: "The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard has forcibly seized a merchant ship. The merchant ship may have been involved in smuggling activities and is passing through international waters in the Persian Gulf."
This is a photo of the USS McFoil destroyer sailing in the Arabian Sea. Xinhua News Agency/Meilian
The statement stated that after closely monitoring the situation, the US Navy believes that the situation of the incident is not worth taking larger scale actions.
The report stated that the Fifth Fleet did not disclose the exact location of the incident and the flag the ship was flying, nor did it disclose whether the ship is still in Iranian hands.
According to reports, on the 5th, the Central Command of the United States Navy stated that the USS McFal destroyer responded to a distress signal from an oil tanker. The Iranian military has fired multiple times at the rear, but has not caused any casualties.
Iran defended its actions the day before on the 6th, stating that its forces attempted to intercept an oil tanker, which Iran accused of colliding with an Iranian ship in the Gulf of Oman.
According to reports, since withdrawing from the Iran nuclear agreement in 2018, the United States has re imposed sanctions on Iran, particularly targeting its oil sector. Similar incidents have increased significantly in the waters of the Persian Gulf, which is a critical area for global oil transportation.