Iran’s armed seizing of a tanker in the Red Sea was a retaliation by Tehran to a campaign of assassinations against enemy leaders by Israel and the US, a Middle East expert says.
Nader Hashemi, an associate professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics, says the tanker’s capture represented a “serious escalation of tension” between Iran and Washington.
Hashemi said the incident, in which six masked soldiers stormed the St Nicholas on the coast off Oman, was “Iran’s response to the attacks against a senior IRGC general in Damascus, a senior Hezbollah official in south Lebanon and Israel’s assassination of a top Hamas official recently in Beirut.
“Iran has always threatened tanker traffic in the Persian Gulf in the context of rising tensions with the US,” the expert at Georgetown University, Washington DC told Daily Express US.
In response to a succession of attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels on ships in the Red Sea, the American and British militaries bombed over a dozen sites used by the group in Yemen on Thursday.
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The US Air Force’s Mideast command said it carried out strikes on more than 60 targets, including “command-and-control nodes, munitions depots, launching systems, production facilities and air defence radar systems”.
President Biden said the strikes were to demonstrate that the United States and its allies “will not tolerate” the Houthi’s ceaseless attacks on the Red Sea.
The President said the decision was only taken after attempts at diplomatic negotiations and careful consideration.
It came after Houthis amid a campaign of drone and missile attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea in recent weeks, with the group saying it would target any ships with links to Israel in solidarity with Hamas.
The coordinated military attack in Yemen, came just a week after the White House and partner nations gave the Houthis a final warning to cease further attacks or face potential military action.
The tanker attack, which was carried out on the orders of an Iranian court order, was not directly related to the Houthi assaults.
And though tensions between Iran’s proxies and the US have exploded in recent weeks, Hashemi believes direct conflict between the two nations remains some way off.
“I don’t see the Biden Administration bombing Iran at this moment,” the academic said. “We are a long way from this possibility, notwithstanding Israeli encouragement to take on Iran.”
But Hashemi believes Washington is failing to address the true source of the unrest in the region.
“We are seeing these rising tensions as a direct result of the Israel-Gaza war,” he said. “The US wants to focus on the symptoms of these recent escalations of tensions, not root causes (the situation in Gaza).”
In a recent visit to the Middle East, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected growing international calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza but told Israeli officials that other regional powers have made clear that a pathway to realizing Palestinian political rights is essential for bringing peace to the region.
“Israel must stop taking steps that undercut the Palestinians’ ability to govern themselves effectively,” the US’ top diplomat said. “Israel must be a partner of the Palestinian leaders who are willing to lead their people in living side by side in peace with Israel.”
