ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The US Navy on Sunday announced that it had stopped and forcibly taken over a stateless fishing vessel in the Gulf of Oman carrying 40 tons of a fertilizer potentially used to make explosives.
According to a statement by the US 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, the “guided-missile destroyer USS Cole and patrol coastal ship USS Chinook interdicted the stateless vessel transiting from Iran in waters outside of any state’s territorial sea.”
“US forces discovered 40 tons of urea fertilizer, a chemical compound with agricultural applications that is also known to be used as an explosive precursor,” the statement continued.
The ship was seized along a route infamously used to smuggle weapons to the Huthi rebels in Yemen. The statement also describes the same “stateless fishing vessel” as one that was caught carrying thousands of AK-47 assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, heavy sniper rifles, and other weapons off the coast of Somalia last February.
Following the ship’s capture on January 18, the US Navy handed over the vessel, as well as all its components, to Yemen Coast Guard officials on January 21.
An early January AFP report stated that the United Nations (UN) had found thousands of weapons seized in the Arabian Sea not long ago. The weapons all likely came from a single port in Iran, evidence Tehran is exporting arms to Yemen and elsewhere.
The incident comes as Tehran’s negotiating team heads back to Vienna amid talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Despite the Vienna talks making significant progress, the subject of lifting sanctions on Iran have been stalled by Washington.
While the US, under former President Donald Trump’s administration withdrew from the talks, Iran has enormously increased its uranium enrichment. Iran’s atomic energy agency in November said that its stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium has reached over 210 kilograms, while it was not meant to enrich uranium above 3.67 percent according to the JCPOA.
American and Iranian warships in the Persian Gulf had a tense encounter last April, when an Iranian ship cut in front of the American ship, causing the vessel to stop abruptly.
The US and G7 member states last July accused Iran of a drone attack on a ship off the coast of Oman that killed two sailors, holding British and Romanian nationalities respectively. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken vowed to hold Iran responsible for the attack, while Iran denied responsibility.
In 2020, eleven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) vessels approached the US Navy’s 5th Fleet while they were “conducting joint integration operations” with Apache attack helicopters in the Persian Gulf.
