Iranian ship believed to be floating troop base in Red Sea is attacked
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — An Iranian cargo ship believed to be a base for the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and anchored for years in the Red Sea off Yemen has been attacked, Tehran acknowledged Wednesday.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the attack — suspected to have been carried out by Israel — on the MV Saviz. The assault came as Iran and world powers sat down in Vienna on Tuesday for the first talks about the U.S. potentially rejoining Tehran’s tattered nuclear deal, showing that the challenges ahead don’t rest merely in those negotiations.
The ship’s long presence in the region, repeatedly criticized by Saudi Arabia, has come as the West and United Nations experts say Iran has provided arms and support to Yemen’s Houthi rebels amid Yemen’s years-long war. Iran denies arming the Houthis, though components found in the rebels’ weaponry are linked to Tehran.
Iran previously described the Saviz as aiding in “anti-piracy†efforts in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a crucial choke point in international shipping. A statement attributed to Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh described the ship as a commercial vessel.
“Fortunately, no casualties were reported ... and technical investigations are underway,†Khatibzadeh said. “Our country will take all necessary measures through international authorities.â€
In an earlier state TV statement, an anchor cited a New York Times story that quoted an anonymous U.S. official as saying Israel had informed the U.S. that it carried out an attack Tuesday morning on the vessel. Israeli officials declined to comment on the incident when reached by the Associated Press, as did the Saviz’s owner.
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Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, while refusing to say if his country launched the attack, described Iran and its regional allies as a major threat.
“Israel must continue to defend itself,†Gantz told reporters. “Any place we find an operational challenge and necessity, we will continue to act.â€
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called the multi-party talks in Vienna a “success†while speaking to his Cabinet on Wednesday.
“Today, one united statement is being heard that all sides of the nuclear deal have concluded that there is no solution better but the deal,†he said.
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Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency, believed to be close to the Revolutionary Guard, blamed the blast on explosives planted on Saviz’s hull. It did not blame anyone for the attack and said Iranian officials likely would offer more information in the coming days.
In a statement, the U.S. military’s Central Command said only that it was “aware of media reporting of an incident involving the Saviz in the Red Sea.â€
“We can confirm that no U.S. forces were involved in the incident,†the command said. “We have no additional information to provide.â€
The Saviz, owned by the state-linked Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, came to the Red Sea in late 2016, according to ship-tracking data. In the years since, it has drifted off the Dahlak archipelago, a chain of islands off the coast of the nearby African nation of Eritrea in the Red Sea. It likely received supply replenishments and switched crew via Iranian vessels passing through the waterway.
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Briefing materials from the Saudi military earlier obtained by the AP showed men on the vessel dressed in camouflage, military-style fatigues, as well as small boats capable of ferrying cargo to the Yemeni coast. That briefing material also included pictures showing a variety of antennas on the vessel that the Saudi government described as unusual for a commercial cargo ship, suggesting that it conducted electronic surveillance. Other images showed that the ship had mounts for .50-caliber machine guns.
The Washington Institute for Near-East Policy has called the Saviz an “Iranian mothership†in the region, similarly describing it as an intelligence-gathering base and an armory for the Revolutionary Guard. Policy papers from the institute do not explain how they came to that conclusion, though its analysts routinely have access to Gulf and Israeli military sources.
The Saviz had been under international sanctions until Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which saw Tehran receive economic relief in exchange for limiting its enrichment of uranium. The Trump administration later renewed American sanctions on the Saviz as part of its unilateral decision to withdraw from the accord.
In June 2019, Saudi Arabia flew a critically ill Iranian off the Saviz after Tehran made a request through the United Nations for assistance.
Iran has begun construction at its underground nuclear facility at Fordo amid tensions with the U.S. over its atomic program, satellite images show.
Amid the wider tensions between the U.S. and Iran, a series of mysterious blasts have targeted ships in the region, including some that the U.S. Navy blamed on Iran. Among the ships damaged recently was an Israeli-owned car carrier in an attack Netanyahu blamed on Iran. Another was an Iranian cargo ship in the Mediterranean Sea.
Iran also has blamed Israel for a recent series of attacks, including a mysterious explosion in July that destroyed an advanced centrifuge assembly plant at its Natanz nuclear facility. Another is the November killing of a top Iranian scientist who founded the Islamic Republic’s military nuclear program two decades ago.
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