Behind Tehran’s release of Vietnamese tanker

Eslam Mohamed

Tehran’s release of the detained Vietnamese ship came to bring down the curtain on the long story of the hijacking, which was the focus of world attention. Ship and tanker tracking websites revealed that the ship was released and set off towards the Gulf of Oman.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seized the oil tanker while it was on its way to the Gulf of Oman.

According to the information received, the tanker’s current course is the Gulf of Oman, and it is sailing towards the south, although its previous destination was different from this path.

The oil tanker, named Sothys, took 700,000 barrels of oil from the Oman Pride tanker in the Omani port of Sohar in June and then transported Iranian oil in July. It was not allowed to transport the oil to the Chinese Port of Longkou, but after Beijing refused the shipment, the Vietnam-flagged tanker returned after its cargo was stolen.

Tanker Trackers, a company that tracks oil tankers, stated that the Iranian government transferred a shipment of a Vietnamese tanker to an oil tanker owned by a company affiliated with the IRGC’s Quds Force.

According to Iranian media, Vietnam did not deliver a protest note to the Iranian ambassador in Hanoi, against the background of the detention of the Vietnamese tanker. Rather, the Vietnamese authorities invited the Iranian ambassador to the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry to inquire only about the detained oil tanker at Bandar Abbas port.

A spokesman for the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry announced that his country is currently in talks with Tehran to solve the problem as soon as possible.

The US Navy was criticized for not intervening during the hijacking, especially since the IRGC took control of the ship by force.

But the Americans protested that the ship’s crew did not request the help of US forces to confront the attack and that the civilian ship did not make any distress call when the IRGC took control of it.

This incident comes before the resumption of talks to revive the nuclear agreement between Iran and the major powers, namely the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia, as Tehran deliberately heats up the atmosphere before resuming negotiations as one of its means of pressure during the negotiations.

Iranian media claimed that the IRGC rescued the ship from US ships that tried to steal its oil, but it turned out that the Americans had nothing to do with it and that the Vietnamese tanker was sailing by chance near a US Navy patrol before being taken to Iran by the IRGC.