By Rory Jones in Dubai and Max Colchester in London
A British warship trained its guns on three Iranian vessels that
tried to block the passage of a U.K.-flagged oil tanker into the
Strait of Hormuz, the country's Defense Ministry said, a
confrontation that comes amid heightened tensions between
Washington and Tehran.
The three Iranian ships tried on Wednesday to impede the British
Heritage as the tanker carrying oil for British oil giant BP PLC
traveled from the Persian Gulf into the Strait, but were turned
away by the HMS Montrose, the ministry said on Thursday. The event
followed British forces' seizure of an Iranian tanker off the
Gibraltar coast last week, which Iran called an act of piracy.
The U.S. and U.K. have accused Iran's Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps of mounting assaults on vessels carrying oil through
the Strait of Hormuz in recent months. However, Wednesday's
incident marks the first time since tensions flared earlier this
year between the U.S. and Iran that a Western warship has come
close to military engagement with Iranian naval forces.
Sepahnews.com, an Iranian news website tied to the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps, a powerful military group in Iran,
denied the unit's forces had tried to detain the ship.
The British government didn't identify the types of Iranian
vessels involved and didn't accuse the ships of seeking to seize
the tanker.
The U.S. military was aware of the incident, said Navy Capt.
Bill Urban, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command. "Threats to
international freedom of navigation require an international
solution. The world economy depends on the free flow of commerce,
and it is incumbent on all nations to protect and preserve this
linchpin of global prosperity."
The incident could accelerate a U.S. attempt to build a
coalition of states to share the burden of protecting commercial
vessels near Iranian waters. It could also further rattle the oil
market and destabilize shipping through the Strait of Hormuz,
through which about a third of the world's seaborne crude moves
from countries such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates.
Front-month West Texas Intermediate futures recently were up
0.5% to $60.74, while Brent futures were 0.6% higher at $67.40.
Iran and the U.S. have been locked in a bitter standoff since
the spring. The White House last year pulled out of a 2015
agreement that sought to contain Iran's nuclear capabilities and in
April said it would use sanctions to force " Iran's oil exports to
zero." The Trump administration has slapped sanctions on Iranian
individuals and institutions, including the IRGC, in an effort to
force Tehran to cease aggressive activities in the Middle East and
negotiate a new nuclear pact.
Tehran has responded by taking steps to breach the 2015
agreement and modestly expand its nuclear program.
Iranian officials have threatened to retaliate, with one senior
official suggesting seizing a British ship in the Persian Gulf
after U.K. forces last week helped commandeer an Iranian ship off
the coast of Gibraltar. That ship was carrying oil bound for Syria
in what U.K. officials said breached European Union sanctions on
sales of oil to the country. On Thursday, Gibraltar said the
captain of the Iranian vessel was arrested for breaking EU
sanctions on Syria.
Tehran has denied that the tanker was headed to Syria and called
its seizure illegal because Iran isn't subject to a European oil
embargo.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday warned the U.K.,
according to Iran's Press TV. "You are the ones initiating
insecurity, and will come to realize its consequences in the
future," he said.
On Thursday, Gen. Ali Fadavi, a deputy Revolutionary Guards
commander, said the U.K. and U.S. "will regret" detaining the ship
carrying Iranian cargo, according to the semiofficial Fars news
agency.
"If the enemies would have done the smallest calculation, they
would not have taken such action," he said. He didn't comment on
the U.K.'s allegations that Iranian vessels tried to block the
British Heritage's passage.
One U.K. government official said London was in "de-escalation
mode" in an effort to calm the situation.
The British Heritage had been on its way to pick up a cargo of
oil from Basra port in southern Iraq when it changed course earlier
this week, without loading, over fears it would be seized by
Iranian forces following Tehran's threats. The tanker stopped off
the coast of Saudi Arabia, and was located off the coast of Oman
early Thursday morning, according to MarineTraffic.com.
After the three Iranian ships approached the British Heritage,
the HMS Montrose trained its guns at the vessels and issued verbal
warnings for them to back away, said the U.K. Defense Ministry. The
three ships complied.
A ministry spokesman added that the British Heritage has since
left the Persian Gulf.
Britain has maintained a naval presence in the region for years.
The HMS Montrose has been in the Persian Gulf since late 2018. The
U.K. currently has four minesweepers deployed there.
A Defense Ministry spokeswoman said she wouldn't comment on
whether the government planned to increase its naval presence in
the Gulf. BP declined to comment further on the event.
BP is a partner in the development of Iraq's Rumaila, the
world's third-largest producing field, and it shipped around 50,000
barrels a day of Iraqi oil in 2018, via the Strait of Hormuz.
"We've just got to be really careful about our ships," BP Chief
Executive Bob Dudley said at an event at London-based think tank
Chatham House on Wednesday, in relation to Iran's threats.
The U.S. also has accused Iran of attacking tankers in the Gulf
of Oman -- which Tehran denied -- and said Iran shot down a U.S.
spy drone in the area. Tehran said the unmanned aerial vehicle was
inside Iranian airspace when it was downed.
The U.K. has backed the U.S. assertion that Iran attacked the
ships. But London has been at odds with the White House over its
decision to pull out of the nuclear deal, and British officials are
working with European nations on how to salvage the accord.
The attacks on tankers have roiled oil markets and increased the
costs of transporting crude and other products in and out of the
Persian Gulf.
The U.S. has worked in recent weeks on a plan for deterring
attacks on tankers that calls for ships from Arab, Asian and other
foreign nations to stand watch in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of
Oman while maritime patrol planes fly overhead.
Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., which export a large amount of oil
through the Strait of Hormuz, have backed such a plan.
"This idea has to be thought out," said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a
political scientist and former professor in the U.A.E. "Gulf states
would be happy to see this internationalization of Gulf
security."
Military analysts say the threat is clear. The Revolutionary
Guard Corps is equipped to swarm hostile vessels with fast boats
armed with torpedoes and short-range missiles and small patrol
craft equipped with machine guns and rocket launchers.
Military escorts in the region have a precedent. During the
Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the two countries attacked each other's
ships in the Gulf and Iran eventually began targeting
foreign-flagged vessels. The assaults subsided when the U.S.
escorted and reflagged foreign tankers under its ensign.
--Aresu Eqbali in Tehran and Sarah McFarlane in London
contributed to this article.
Write to Rory Jones at rory.jones@wsj.com and Max Colchester at
max.colchester@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 11, 2019 14:58 ET (18:58 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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