IRGC naval units seized 250,000 liters of fuel smuggled on one of the ships and 130,000 liters on the other vessel.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Friday they had seized two vessels along the country’s coast on the Gulf and the nearby Gulf of Oman for allegedly smuggling fuel.
Iran, which has some of the world’s cheapest fuel prices due to heavy subsidies and the fall of its currency, has been fighting rampant fuel smuggling by land to neighboring states and by sea to Gulf Arab countries. It has frequently seized boats it says are being used for smuggling oil in the Gulf.
Revolutionary Guards naval units seized 250,000 liters of fuel smuggled on one of the ships and 130,000 liters on the other vessel, bringing the total of confiscated fuel in the past week to 650,000 liters, according to a statement posted on the Guards’ official website.
The first ship’s seven crew members have been detained, a Guards official told state TV earlier, adding that they included Iranians and foreigners, without giving further details.
Last week the Guards seized a foreign vessel carrying 220,000 liters of smuggled fuel in the Gulf and detained its crew of 11, Iranian media reported.
According to a report, the Iran’s Revolutionary Guards say they seized two vessels in waters south of Iran, one carrying 250,000 liters of smuggled fuel and another loaded with 130,000 liters.
According to a report by ISNA, one of the vessels was seized in Persian Gulf waters near the Ameri Port in Bushehr province, and the other in Hormozgan province near the Jask Port on the Gulf of Oman on Friday.
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Head of the Public Relations Department of the IRGC Navy Colonel Gholam-Hossein Hosseini said that the first ship’s seven crew have been detained.
Last week the Guards had seized another vessel carrying 220,000 liters of smuggled fuel in the Persian Gulf and detained its crew of 11.
In recent weeks, IRGC naval units say they have managed to seize a total of 650,000 liters of smuggled fuel from the vessels they seized and handed them over to local judicial authorities.
The sizes of cargos involved indicate these were relatively small vessels transporting oil between local ports. Large tankers carry hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil.
Iran has boarded and seized foreign-flagged tankers in the past. One major incident occurred in January 2021 when the IRGC seized a Korean tanker for what seemed to be Iranian pressure on Seoul to release around $7 billion of funds frozen because of US sanctions.
The US Navy in the Persian Gulf region is known to have intervened in some instances to protect tankers.
