Iran’s Revolutionary Guards seized a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, days after Tehran threatened to close the crucial shipping route in retaliation for an Israeli strike on its Syria consulate that killed two Iranian generals, but the vessel they boarded is Portuguese flagged.
Portugal is a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) so any attack on the sea-trading European nation invites a response from military forces of all other NATO member countries.
The war began with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack inside Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians. Israel’s brutal retaliatory offensive has killed almost 35,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, in a manner that some have described as a genocide.
As ceasefire talks aiming to pause the six-month-old Israel-Hamas war dragged on, fears that Iran could launch an attack on the Jewish state spurred France to recommend its citizens avoid the region.
Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported that the Special Naval Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) had boarded the Portuguese-flagged MSC Aries, via helicopter and taken it into Iranian waters.
The Mediterranean Shipping Company, MSC, confirmed that the MSC Aries vessel was “boarded by Iranian authorities via helicopter” as the ship passed the Strait of Hormuz and was diverted toward Iran.
The ship has 25 crew onboard, said Giles Read, MSC Global Head of Communications. “We are working closely with the relevant authorities to ensure their well-being and safe return of the vessel.”
MSC said it had chartered the MSC Aries and that the vessel was owned by Gortal Shipping Inc, which “is affiliated to” Zodiac Maritime.
President Joe Biden said Iran is “threatening to launch a significant attack on Israel,” and pledged “ironclad” support for Washington’s top regional ally despite diplomatic tensions and domestic political blowback over Israel’s military conduct in Gaza.
Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said that Israel made the mistake of attacking the Iranian diplomatic mission in Syria, stressing that “Consulates and embassies of any country are regarded as the soil of that country. When they attack our consulate, it means that they have attacked our soil.”
Of the 16 individuals killed in the attack, seven were from the IRGC, including two of its top leaders, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Deputy General Mohammad Hadi Hajriahimi. This is similar to the U.S. strike in Iraq in 2017 that resulted in the death of Qasem Soleimani who was head of Quds Force at the time.
The strike on the consulate was intended to signal that there are consequences to Iranian support of groups like Hamas or Hezbollah or putting pressure on negotiators working on a cease-fire and hostage release in Gaza.
Auburn University faculty Peter White and Matt Clary recently said that, despite the heightened animosity between the two nations and the CIA’s belief it could lead to an Iranian retaliation, a larger war backed by major powers like the United States, Russia, and China is unlikely.
NATO and the United States support the opposite side of the conflict than China and Russia, and there is a bizarre assumption that Iran does want this to escalate into a full-scale conflict with Israel that would almost certainly draw in the United States.
Almost nobody ever wants a war, but when it arrives on one’s doorstep nobody wants to lose one.