Explosions hit Iranian oil tanker

Tehran gives conflicting statements on cause of incident

Seagulls flock Friday at the Red Sea port city of Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. The circumstances surrounding explosions aboard an Iranian oil tanker traveling the Red Sea remained murky Friday.
Seagulls flock Friday at the Red Sea port city of Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. The circumstances surrounding explosions aboard an Iranian oil tanker traveling the Red Sea remained murky Friday.

Explosions rocked an Iranian oil tanker in the Red Sea early Friday, in what the state news media initially described as a missile attack, raising fears about increasing tensions in an already volatile region. But hours later, official accounts were far more cautious, raising questions about what exactly had befallen the vessel.

The circumstances of the attack remained murky, punctuated by contradictory details on whether the ship was on fire, whether an oil spill had been stopped and even whether the tanker had been hit by missiles in the first place.

The National Iranian Oil Co., which owns the tanker, said the ship had been struck by missiles at 5 a.m. and again at 5:20 a.m., state-run news outlets reported, adding that it had suffered damage about 60 miles from Jiddah, Saudi Arabia.

The crew members were safe and the ship was in stable condition, the state news media reported, even though its two main tanks had been struck and the hull was damaged. The ship was heading back to Iran, state media reported later in the day.

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By late Friday, Iran appeared to be playing down the explosions. Iranian officials and media, typically quick to blame tensions on Saudi Arabia, the United States or Israel, refrained from pointing a finger at any culprit. Even media outlets associated with the hard-line Revolutionary Guard reported that the explosions were under investigation, and it was not clear how the ships were damaged or by whom.

Abbas Mousavi, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, condemned what the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency described as the targeting of the Iranian tanker, although he did not elaborate on how the ship had been targeted or by whom. "The details of the attack and the instigators are under investigation and will be announced in due course," Mousavi said.

Later in the day, the news agency reported that the National Iranian Oil Co. had dismissed the possibility that the ship was hit by missiles.

Iranian state television identified the tanker as the Sabiti. But ship tracker website Marine Traffic showed that the vessel had not transmitted any location data since mid-August.

Industry experts who track tanker traffic had no independent verification of the reported attack. Alex Booth, head of market analysis at Kpler, a tanker tracking service, said he had first heard of possible trouble early Friday when the tanker suddenly turned on its tracking device.

"This morning it appeared at 7:09" Greenwich Mean Time, he said, adding that "the last time we had it prior to today was on Aug. 13 in the Persian Gulf" near Iran. The tanker had been tracked earlier in the year, moving between Iran and Turkey, he said.

Regardless of what happened to the tanker, it was likely to escalate tensions in the region, where a rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran has been playing out in various ways, including the seizure of a number of oil tankers and an attack on Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure.

Several hours after the reported tanker attack, no country or organization had stepped forward to claim responsibility. Dryad Global, a maritime security firm, noted that the location, just off the west coast of Saudi Arabia, pointed to Saudi involvement, but said in an analysis that the kingdom would have little to gain from such a move.

"In terms of Saudi interests within the region, it remains unclear why Saudi would seek to target Iran in this manner," the firm wrote. "An attack of relatively low sophistication with limited and almost negligible strategic gain would be highly irregular and not serve any Saudi strategic narrative."

Lt. Pete Pagano, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, said the military was "aware of reports of this incident" but did not elaborate.

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the U.S. will send fighter jets and additional air defenses to the Saudis to help defend the kingdom against Iran amid the heightened tensions. He called Saudi Arabia a longstanding security partner in the region.

Initial news reports of the explosion sent the price of Brent crude oil, the international bench mark, up about 2% in futures markets.

Prices gave up some of the gains as the International Energy Agency trimmed its forecast for demand growth this year and in 2020, before rising again on Esper's announcement.

Information for this article was contributed by Jacquelyn Melinek, James Thornhill, Sharon Cho and Elizabeth Low of Bloomberg News; and by Nasser Karimi, Jon Gambrell and Lolita C. Baldor of The Associated Press.

A Section on 10/12/2019

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