The Iranian coastguard has detained a ship in the Gulf along with its crew of 12 Filipinos, on the grounds of "smuggling fuel."
The commander of the coast guard in the Iranian province of Hormozgan Colonel Hussein Dahki said the ship was stopped in the coast of the city of "Sirik" overlooking the Sea of Oman and located in the southeast.
The seizures included nearly 284,000 liters of diesel fuel worth more than 320 billion riyals ($ 7.6 million), Dahki said in a statement on Saturday.
He pointed out that the process resulted in the arrest of 12 people of Filipino nationality and referred to the competent judicial authorities.
It is noteworthy that the smuggling of Iranian fuel has been popular recently, on the back of the decline in the price of the riyal against foreign currencies, and subsidized prices provided by the government to consumers in the country.
Iran is tackling fuel smuggling by land to neighboring countries and by sea to Gulf Arab states. It has previously seized ships in the Gulf, saying it is used to smuggle oil.
The incident is the latest in a series of tanker seizures, following rising tensions in the Gulf region following the unilateral withdrawal of the United States - in May 2018 - from the nuclear deal with Iran and the imposition of sanctions.
Because of US sanctions, Iran's production has fallen to its lowest level since the 1980s, according to the International Energy Agency, to an average of 2.2 million barrels per day, from 3.8 million last year.
Iran has threatened that international waterways would not be as safe as before if its oil exports were stopped.