Drone attack on oil tanker off Syria. The tanker war continues
The fire aboard an oil tanker near the Banias refinery in Syria, extinguished on Sunday, would have broken out following a suspected attack by drones and coming "from the direction of Lebanese waters", as communicated by the Syrian government. The Guardian cites local sources to say that at least three crew members were killed.
The tanker seen burning today off the coast of Baniyas is not an Iranian vessel, but a Beirut-registered tanker called WISDOM. She has assisted the Iranian VLCC supertanker ARMAN 114 (ex. ADRIAN DARYA-1) by offloading 300-350K barrels at a time due to depth restrictions. #OOTT pic.twitter.com/tv6lH38IHq
– TankerTrackers.com, Inc.
(@TankerTrackers) April 24, 2021
At first the tanker was identified as Iranian, but, TankerTrackers said in a tweet that "the tanker seen burning today off the coast of Banias is not an Iranian ship" but registered in Beirut, but still it seems it was engaged in transporting Iranian oil. . This has led to widespread immediate speculation that this was another Israeli attack intended to disrupt Iran's ability to export oil, particularly to fuel-starved allied Syria and sanctioned.
Iranian military chief Mohammad Bagheri threatened to "teach Israel a good lesson" on Sunday, appearing to suggest that the Jewish state was behind a reported attack on an Iranian tanker off the coast of Syria over the weekend, but without blaming accident.
Bagheri told reporters: "We do not announce anything about the recent incidents, nor do we know who did it, but the Resistance Front will give Israel a great lesson," according to several Iranian journalists.
"The Israelis think they can keep hitting Syria and make malicious moves elsewhere and in the seas and get no response," Bagheri said according to The Times of Israel .
The escalation of Israeli covert action, the largest of which was a sabotage attack on Iran's Natanz nuclear power plant on April 11, appears to be part of efforts to derail the ongoing nuclear talks in Vienna. Tel Aviv urges the Biden administration to abandon the talks, which has yet to dissuade the White House. The oil tanker incident on Saturday also appears to be aimed at continuing economic suffocation through sanctions on Syrian Assad in Syria.
All of this comes after a March Wall Street Journal investigation that found Israel has been conducting a covert sabotage campaign against Iranian ships carrying oil to Syria for over a year.
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The article Drone attack on oil tanker off Syria. The tanker war continues comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/attacco-di-droni-a-petroliera-al-alrgo-della-siria-prosegue-la-guerra-dei-tanker/ on Mon, 26 Apr 2021 08:00:28 +0000.