Iran seizes two Greek tankers in Gulf waters

Diplomatic incident at sea, against the background of the war in Ukraine. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic, announced on Friday May 27 that they had seized two Greek tankers in the waters of the Gulf. Tehran had recently protested Greece’s seizure of a ship carrying Iranian oil.

The Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced in a press release the acts “comparable to piracy” and called on Greek citizens to avoid traveling to Iran.

Athens claimed Iranian navy helicopters airlifted gunmen aboard the two tankers. One of them, the Delta Poseidon, was then sailing in international waters at the time of the intervention, according to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The second, who has not been named, was near the Iranian coast.

Athens said nine Greeks are part of the crews of the two ships, but declined to give the total number of sailors on board. The European Union and the International Maritime Organization have been alerted to the incident, he added.

Earlier on Friday, Iran again called for “get up immediately” the seizure of a ship carrying Iranian oil held since mid-April by Greece at the request of the United States. Under European sanctions linked to the war in Ukraine, the Greek authorities seized on April 19 off the island of Euboea the Russian tanker Pegasrenamed a few days later lana.

According to reports at the time, the tanker was carrying 115,000 tons of Iranian oil. On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the Greek port police announced that this oil would be “transferred to the United States (…) following a request from American justice”.

Tehran accuses Washington of “clear violation of maritime law and international conventions” and calls to “immediately lift the seizure of the vessel and its cargo”.