Iran on Thursday seized a Texas-bound oil tanker off Oman.
The U.S. Navy demanded the release of the tanker, which was headed for Houston when it was taken in the Gulf of Oman.
“The Iranian government should immediately release the oil tanker,” the Bahrain-based U.S. Fifth Fleet said in a statement.
“Iran’s actions are contrary to international law and disruptive to regional security and stability,” it added.
Iran said the ship crashed into an Iranian vessel, leaving two crew missing.
The Fifth Fleet at first blamed Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. It then clarified to say the Iranian navy seized the tanker.
“Following the collision of an unknown ship with an Iranian vessel in the waters of the Persian Gulf two of the vessel’s crew went missing and several others were injured,” the Iranian Navy said in a statement.
“The navy of the army, by court order, seized the violator ship, that was fleeing with the flag of the Marshall Islands, and directed it to the coastal waters of the Islamic republic of Iran,” it added.
Let us look at this a little. First, if the ship was in international waters, this is PIRACY by definition. While a Navy might have the. right to “board and investigate” seizure is still piracy.
Now let’s look at the physics. If another ship or boat enters the shipping lane less than 3 miles in front of the tanker, it will NEVER KNOW that ship is there at all.
If the tanker “sees” the boat or ship it takes 5 miles to stop, and three miles to turn. This means that there is no way to avoid smaller vessels at all. All navies know this because their large ships operate under the same physics.
Iran does not seem to be interested in physics or in investigating the cause of an accident, instead in seizing the ship itself and kidnapping its crew and seizing its cargo destined to the USA.
Shipping lanes generally have a travel direction and lane width. They also have a separation of MILES between travel directions. My guess, the other ‘boat’ was in the wrong shipping lanes and traveling in a direction without any right-of way.
Time for the US, British and other naives to begin patrolling and arresting Iranian military vessels as print ships if this is true. Easily enough determined as there are black boxes on large vessels and there are satellite and other images and tracking methods. Look out Iran, you may be declared a “pirate nation” and all your military vessels seized on sight.
My response should read “begin patrolling and arresting Iranian military vessels as PIRATE ships…]
On a situation like this, we do not know what the real facts are. Our government lies and the Iranian government lies all the time.