Tehran: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have seized a ship flying the flag of Eswatini and carrying “smuggled fuel”, state media reported Sunday.
Iranian forces regularly target tankers that Tehran accuses of illegally transporting fuel in the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint for global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments.
“A vessel carrying 350,000 litres of smuggled fuel operating under the flag of Eswatini was seized and taken to Bushehr” in the southwest, state television said, quoting a local Revolutionary Guards commander.
“There are 13 crew members on board, all from a neighbouring country and India,” it added, without naming the other country.
Eswatini’s government denied all knowledge and said there were currently no ships authorised to fly its flag.
“The Kingdom of Eswatini has no connection whatsoever to the vessel reported to be seized in Iran, and we reject in the strongest terms any attempts to associate our country with maritime criminality,” it said in a statement.
Earlier this month, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps -- the ideological arm of the Islamic republic’s military -- confirmed they had seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf.
The company managing the ship later said Iran had released the tanker and its 21 crew members were safe.
The vessel, named the Talara, was heading through the Strait of Hormuz when it suddenly changed course towards Iranian waters.
Its seized cargo included “Iranian petrochemical products... illegally transported towards Singapore”, the Iranian news agency Fars said, adding that “the main person responsible was an Iranian individual or company”.
Fars said the Talara’s seizure was not taken as a measure against any other nation, but was a purely local matter.
Last year, the Revolutionary Guards also seized a container ship they said had links to Israel following a deadly attack on Iran’s consulate in Syria blamed on Tehran’s regional foe.
