Israel notifies US it attacked Iranian ship in Red Sea – report

Israel notified the US that it is responsible for the Tuesday attack on an Iranian cargo ship affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps off the coast of Eritrea in the Red Sea, an American official told The New York Times.The IRGC-affiliated Tasnim news reported Tuesday that the ship was damaged in an explosion caused by limpet mines on the hull of the ship.Iranian state TV acknowledged the attack Wednesday, citing foreign reports, according to The Associate Press.Saudi media later speculated that the blast was caused by “Israeli commandos”.

The United States Naval Institute (USNI) reported last year that the Saviz, while officially listed as a merchant ship, was likely a covert IRGC forward base. Tasnim confirmed this on Tuesday, saying that the ship had been stationed in the Red Sea in recent years to support Iranian commandos escorting commercial vessels.According to the USNI, as of October 2020, the ship had barely moved from its location off the coast of Yemen for three years. The report stated that the Saviz may have been used to feed intelligence to Iran and the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen for a number of purposes, including to help them carry out strikes on maritime vessels in the area, with a number of strikes in recent years blamed on Iran and the Houthis.

The vessel reportedly showed up on independent ship tracking site MarineTraffic at about 4:45 a.m. on Tuesday before dropping off the map again at 9:44 a.m., according to social media reports.

The incident comes after two strikes on Israeli vessels in the region and reports of dozens of earlier strikes carried out by Israel and Iran on each other’s maritime vessels in locations ranging from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf.

Late last month, an Iranian missile was reportedly fired at an Israeli ship between India and Oman, striking and damaging the ship. In February, Iran allegedly attacked the Israeli-owned cargo vessel MV Helios Ray, which was damaged by an explosion in the Gulf of Oman.

Additionally in March, Maariv, reported that dozens of Iranian ships had been attacked by Israel throughout the Middle East, after The Wall Street Journal reported that a dozen Iranian oil tankers headed to Syria had been attacked by Israel.

The report also comes as Iran meets with European and American officials to discuss a possible return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal.The US denied any involvement in the incident on Tuesday night, US officials told Reuters. Following a Jerusalem Post query, the IDF said that it doesn’t respond to foreign reports. 

Earlier on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel would defend itself against Iranian threats in the backdrop of the indirect negotiations between Iran and the world powers.

“We cannot back the dangerous nuclear plan, because a nuclear Iran is an existential threat and a very big threat to the security of the whole world,” said Netanyahu in a meeting of the Likud faction in the Knesset. “We must act against the fanatical regime in Iran that is simply threatening to erase us from the earth…We will always know to defend ourselves by ourselves from those who seek to kill us.”