The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has captured a foreign tanker smuggling oil in the waters of the Farsi island in the Gulf, Iran’s state TV reported on Sunday.
An IRGC commander was cited as saying the tanker had some 700,000 liters of fuel on board at the time of capture.
Reports indicate that seven crew members of different nationalities have been arrested by the Iranian authorities. Their nationalities have however not been revealed.
The tanker is the third foreign vessel capture by Iran in the Gulf of Oman in the past several weeks. One of the previously captured ships was reported to have links to the United Arab Emirates while another was linked to the U.K.
The seizures began following a similar move by U.K. authorities to capture a supertanker ferrying Iranian crude oil to Syria. Tehran branded the seizure an act of piracy and promised to retaliate.
