The third in a month .. Revolutionary Guard is holding an Iraqi ship "evade" oil

Iran announced on Sunday that the oil tanker seized by the Revolutionary Guard in the Gulf for smuggling fuel is an Iraqi ship.

"The ship was stopped near a Persian island with seven foreign sailors on board," the commander of the Revolutionary Guards' 2nd Marine Zone, Ramadan Zerahi, confirmed.

"The ship was taking the fuel from other ships and transporting it to Arab countries in the Gulf," he said.

He pointed out that the ship was carrying seven hundred thousand liters of fuel smuggled, and was directed to the province of Bushehr (south) before handing over its fuel to the national company for distribution in the province.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard said on Sunday it had stopped a foreign vessel in the Gulf waters on fuel smuggling charges and detained its crew. He said the ship was close to Iran's Farsi island near the border with Saudi Arabia, the third foreign oil ship held by Iran in a month.

The Revolutionary Guard said that its naval forces had arrested in a judicial note all seven crew members of the foreign ship, seven of multiple nationalities.

The head of the island's office in Tehran, Abdul Qader Fayez, explained that the reason for the ship's transfer to the port of Bandar Abbas is the presence of a court charged with such cases in this city, as well as a Gulf water monitoring center in the city itself.

On July 18, Iran seized a Swedish oil tanker carrying a British flag in the Strait of Hormuz, claiming it violated navigation rules, days after the Crown authorities seized an Iranian oil vessel on charges of transporting oil to Syria, On the Damascus regime.

On July 14, Iran detained a Panama-flagged oil tanker for fuel smuggling before the Indian crew was released.

Fuel smuggling
The head of the Al-Jazeera office in Tehran said that Iran is conducting large operations to combat fuel smuggling at its land and sea borders, given the presence of mafias to smuggle fuel because of low prices inside Iran, which is causing heavy losses to Tehran.

The director of the office of the island that the issue of smuggling of fuel abroad is not new, but it is sensitive in the current situation under the tensions in the Gulf waters between Tehran on the one hand, and the United States and some European countries on the other.

As a result of a number of attacks on oil tankers in May and June in the waters of the Gulf, America announced its intention to build a military alliance to secure navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and the Sea of ​​Oman, which was rejected by Tehran and met European countries with different positions between supporters and refused to join.