Iran’s Tanker Seizures May Bring US Convoys Back to the Gulf
Tehran has impounded two massive oil ships. If it doesn’t stop, the US Navy may have to protect the waterway as it did in the 1980s.
Getting aggressive.
Photographer: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images
Virtually unnoticed amid alleged drone attacks on the Kremlin, a looming Ukrainian spring offensive and aggressive Chinese military activity around Taiwan, another region is heating up. Two massive oil tankers, the Advantage Sweet, flagged to the Marshall Islands, and the Niovi, flagged to Panama, were recently seized by maritime elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Both are held by the Iranians and anchored off the coast of Iran near the Strait of Hormuz at Bandar Abbas, the key Iranian naval base in the Arabian Gulf. While the seizure of just two ships may not seem like a crisis, it may be the beginning of a cycle in which the US Navy is drawn, yet again, into a risky mission to protect commercial shipping in the Gulf from Iranian aggression.