Iran claimed this week that it would release momentous news about a great military operation. When the announcement by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) came, it claimed that the US had tried pirating Iranian oil on a tanker and that the oil on the tanker was transferred by the US. IRGC claims that in a daring raid it sent a helicopter with elite IRGC troops to rope down onto the ship and grab the oil back, right in front of the Americans, then it took the tanker back while the US 5th Fleet, the greatest naval power in the world, was helpless.
TankerTrackers.com, which monitors global shipping posted about the incident, adding skepticism. The US also rejected the Iranian claims, saying allegations are “totally false and untrue.”
The real story apparently of this ship is that it sailed to China where its Iranian oil cargo was rejected and the ship had set sail back to Iran anyway. The tanker is apparently owned by a Vietnamese company, TankerTrackers.com wrote on Twitter.
It looks like Iran staged the raid on its own oil to pretend it was “capturing” it from the US. This was to cover up an Iranian failure of exporting oil after it was rejected in Chinese ports.
The overall lesson here is that Iran wants to create an incident. It is willing to use fast boats, helicopters, and IRGC forces in a way that could lead to a real live-fire incident. Much of this is made for propaganda purposes, to create videos that can be shown in Iran.
Source » iranbriefing