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Iran’s supreme leader says oil taken from Greek tankers

Seizures ratchet up tensions simmering over Iran’s tattered 2015 nuclear deal. (File/AFP)
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Updated 04 June 2022
AP
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Iran’s supreme leader says oil taken from Greek tankers

  • Confiscations in retaliation to Greece’s role in US seizure of Iranian crude oil
Updated 04 June 2022
AP

TEHRAN: Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saturday that Iran took the oil from two Greek tankers last month in helicopter-launched raids in the Arabian Gulf.
The confiscations were in retaliation to Greece’s role in the US seizure of crude oil from an Iranian-flagged tanker the same week in the Mediterranean Sea over violating Washington’s harsh sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
“They steal Iranian oil off the Greek coast, then our brave men who don’t fear death respond and seize the enemy’s oil tanker,” Khamenei said during an 80-minute speech on the anniversary of the death of the late founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The seizures ratcheted up tensions between Iran and the West already simmering over Iran’s tattered 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Tehran has been enriching more uranium, closer to weapons-grade levels than ever before, causing concern that negotiators won’t find a way back to the accord and raising the risk of a wider war.
Iran’s seizure of the tankers was the latest in a string of hijackings and explosions to roil a region that includes the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Arabian Gulf through which a fifth of all traded oil passes. The incidents began after then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the nuclear deal, which saw Tehran drastically limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
The US Navy blamed Iran for a series of limpet mine attacks on vessels that damaged tankers in 2019, as well as for a fatal drone attack on an Israeli-linked oil tanker that killed two European crew members in 2021.
Iran also briefly captured a Panama-flagged asphalt tanker off the UAE last year and briefly seized and held a Vietnamese tanker in November.
Tehran denies carrying out the attacks but a wider shadow war between Iran and the West has played out in the region’s volatile waters.
Tanker seizures have been a part of it since 2019, when Iran seized the British-flagged Stena Impero after the UK detained an Iranian oil tanker off Gibraltar. Tehran released the tanker months later as London also released the Iranian vessel.
Iran last year also seized and held a South Korean-flagged tanker for months amid a dispute over billions of dollars of frozen assets Seoul holds.
Satellite images analyzed by AP on Wednesday confirmed that one of the two tankers remained off the coast of the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas. The Planet Labs PBC images from Tuesday showed the Prudent Warrior between Bandar Abbas and Iran’s Qeshm Island near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Arabian Gulf through which a fifth of all the world’s oil traded passes.
It remained unclear where the second ship, the Delta Poseidon, was.
However, the shipping monitoring service TankerTrackers.com said on Saturday that it located Delta Poseidon on the northeast coast of Qeshm Island.
The tanker was reportedly moved from its previous location on Larak island, which has been one of Iran's major oil export points since 1987.

Topics: Iranian Revolutionary Guards #iran tankers

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First responders enter devastated Aleppo neighborhood after days of deadly fighting

Updated 12 January 2026
AP
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First responders enter devastated Aleppo neighborhood after days of deadly fighting

  • The US-backed SDF, which have played a key role in combating the Daesh group in large swaths of eastern Syria, are the largest force yet to be absorbed into Syria’s national army
Updated 12 January 2026
AP

ALEPPO, Syria: First responders on Sunday entered a contested neighborhood in Syria’ s northern city of Aleppo after days of deadly clashes between government forces and Kurdish-led forces. Syrian state media said the military was deployed in large numbers.
The clashes broke out Tuesday in the predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud, Achrafieh and Bani Zaid after the government and the Syrian Democratic Forces, the main Kurdish-led force in the country, failed to make progress on how to merge the SDF into the national army. Security forces captured Achrafieh and Bani Zaid.
The fighting between the two sides was the most intense since the fall of then-President Bashar Assad to insurgents in December 2024. At least 23 people were killed in five days of clashes and more than 140,000 were displaced amid shelling and drone strikes.
The US-backed SDF, which have played a key role in combating the Daesh group in large swaths of eastern Syria, are the largest force yet to be absorbed into Syria’s national army. Some of the factions that make up the army, however, were previously Turkish-backed insurgent groups that have a long history of clashing with Kurdish forces.
The Kurdish fighters have now evacuated from the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood to northeastern Syria, which is under the control of the SDF. However, they said in a statement they will continue to fight now that the wounded and civilians have been evacuated, in what they called a “partial ceasefire.”
The neighborhood appeared calm Sunday. The United Nations said it was trying to dispatch more convoys to the neighborhoods with food, fuel, blankets and other urgent supplies.
Government security forces brought journalists to tour the devastated area, showing them the damaged Khalid Al-Fajer Hospital and a military position belonging to the SDF’s security forces that government forces had targeted.
The SDF statement accused the government of targeting the hospital “dozens of times” before patients were evacuated. Damascus accused the Kurdish-led group of using the hospital and other civilian facilities as military positions.
On one street, Syrian Red Crescent first responders spoke to a resident surrounded by charred cars and badly damaged residential buildings.
Some residents told The Associated Press that SDF forces did not allow their cars through checkpoints to leave.
“We lived a night of horror. I still cannot believe that I am right here standing on my own two feet,” said Ahmad Shaikho. “So far the situation has been calm. There hasn’t been any gunfire.”
Syrian Civil Defense first responders have been disarming improvised mines that they say were left by the Kurdish forces as booby traps.
Residents who fled are not being allowed back into the neighborhood until all the mines are cleared. Some were reminded of the displacement during Syria’s long civil war.
“I want to go back to my home, I beg you,” said Hoda Alnasiri.
 

 

Topics: Fall of Assad Syria Syria Kurds

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