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On Saturday, a unit of the Revolutionary Guards, a powerful Iranian military force, boarded and seized a container ship tied to Israel in the Strait of Hormuz, which divides the Gulf of Oman from the Persian Gulf. The seizure of the ship was carried out after days of threats about a possible direct attack on Israel by Iran, with growing concerns about a possible expansion of the war already underway in the Gaza Strip.
Iran said through the IRNA news agency that the seizure of the ship was carried out by men who approached the ship by helicopter, and then lowered themselves from above onto a pile of containers on the deck of the vessel. .
The operation was filmed by a video shot on the same ship and released by various news agencies: Associated Pressone of those who published it, wrote that the helicopter appears to be a Soviet-era Mil Mi-17, used in the past by both the Revolutionary Guards and the Houthis, a military group supported by Iran and based in Yemen.
The seized ship is the MSC Aries, flying the Portuguese flag and associated with the Zodiac Maritime company, part of the Zodiac group, of the Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer. Zodiac did not comment on the attack, but MSC did, confirming it and saying there were 25 crew members on board the ship. At the moment there is no information about them and their conditions: the IRNA news agency, however, said that the ship was taken to Iranian territorial waters.
The MSC Aries was last located off Dubai on Friday, heading towards the Strait of Hormuz. The vessel had deactivated its tracking, as other Israeli-linked vessels do when they move in the area.
Tensions between Israel and Iran have further increased after the Israeli bombing, last April 1st, against the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria: the bombing, which was not claimed by Israel, killed Mohammad Reza Zahedi, an important general of the Guards revolutionary.
Since then, Iran has threatened to respond to the bombing with a direct attack: it would be the first since the beginning of the war against Israel, which has so far been hit by groups allied with Iran such as Hezbollah, in Lebanon, and the Houthis, in Yemen. In recent days there has been talk of possible attacks on Israeli territory or on Israeli diplomatic offices: these are all hypotheses to be taken with caution, and which at least for now do not seem imminent.
– Read also: Israel is preparing for a possible attack by Iran