The Emerald, the Iranian vessel at the heart of the Israeli oil spill crisis was seen anchored off the coast of Iran’s Kharg Island on January 17, new information has revealed.
Photographs of the vessel, which Israel has accused of deliberately sabotaging the coastline and its environment in an act of ‘eco-terrorism‘, show the ship off the Iranian coast. 
There, it is loaded with an estimated 112,000 tons of crude oil, before encircling the Persian Gulf and entering Egyptian waters.
One photo shows the Emerald in Israel’s economic waters, near Haifa, and two others show the oil stain in the Mediterranean moving closer to Israel.
Another shows the Emerald engaging with a ship that has its transmitter off, west of Syria, and its depth lessening from 14.3 meters under the sea to 8.5 meters, which likely indicates that it unloaded tanks of oil to the other ship, while at sea.
A further photo directly shows the Emerald unloading 750,000 barrels of Iranian oil to a tanker called Lotus, a Syrian ship flying an Iranian flag.
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The photographs were made public via TankerTrackers.com, an online service that tracks and reports shipments and storage of crude oil, and passed on to the Environmental Protection Ministry.
The Libyan-owned vessel turned off its automatic identification system (AIS) – which transmits its location to other ships in the area, as it entered Egyptian waters. ![]()
It turned the AIS on as it went through the Suez Canal, and then off again as it approached Israel’s shores.
The ship remained within tens of kilometers of Israel’s shores, within Israel’s economic waters, for nearly a full day, spilling large amounts of oil on February 1-2, with its AIS off.
Then it continued on to Syria, where it turned on its transmitter, and it returned to Iran, turning off its AIS as it passed Israel. It is currently in Iran.
The tar from the oil spillage reached Israel’s shores on February 17, causing untold damage to the Israeli coastline and its natural habitats. 
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