Iran has denied what it says are baseless allegations by Israel that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard attacked an Israeli-owned cargo ship near the Gulf of Oman last month.
The UN ambassador to Iran in a letter circulated on Tuesday accused Israel of “playing the victim to distract attention from all destabilizing acts and malignant practices throughout the region. “
Ambassador Majid Takht Ravanchi said in a letter to the UN Security Council that the incident “complicates all aspects of false flag activity by actors in order to pursue their malignant policies and pursue their illegitimate goals. forward. “
He was responding to a letter to the council from the UN Ambassador to Israel, Gilad Erdan. He accused the Iranian Revolutionary Guard of installing an explosive device on the Israeli cargo ship Helios Ray in international waters near the Gulf of Oman on Feb. 1. 25. The ship was en route from Saudi Arabia to Singapore.
The explosion caused “significant damage, forcing the ship to return to the port of Dubai to ensure the safety of the crew,” Erdan said in the letter, which was also circulated Tuesday.
Israel has accused Iran’s archenemy of developing a nuclear weapon, an accusation that Tehran denies, and of supporting hostile military groups across the region, such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah Lebanese. Israel has admitted that hundreds of flights have been made on targets linked to Iran and its agents in Syria.
Erdan’s letter cited previous Iranian attacks on civilian vessels, including the seizure of a South Korean-flagged tanker in Gulf waters in early January and four commercial vessels in May 2019 in waters. territory of the United Arab Emirates east of the port of Fujairah.
In the tense summer of 2019, the U.S. military blamed Iran for explosions on two oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most strategic shipping routes in the world. The U.S. had also launched a series of other suspected attacks on Iran, including the use of limpet mines – designed to be magnetically attached to a ship’s hull – to destroy the four oil tankers. take off the nearby port of Emirati Fujairah.
The Israeli ambassador said Feb. 25 attacks and previous attacks “reaffirm Iran’s use of any means to destabilize the area” and urged the Security Council to condemn Iran’s breaches of the UN Charter “and controls the Iranian system responsible for this attack and for overthrowing the regime.”
Ravanchi of Iran objected to the need to hold the “Israeli regime” accountable for all “crimes, brutality and threats … especially his possession of Palestine and parts of other countries, as well as his continued military adventure in an area as volatile as the Middle East. “
He said that “Israel must also be reminded that it will have all the consequences of any possible misinterpretation. “
February. The 25th explosion came as Iran quickly broke its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in a bid to pressure U.S. President Joe Biden to ease the sanctions he has received. under the treaty abandoned by former President Donald Trump nearly three years ago.
Iran has also blamed Israel for a series of recent attacks, including a mysterious explosion last summer that destroyed an advanced centrifuge assembly plant at its Natanz nuclear facility and killed Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a leading Iranian scientist who founded the Islamic Republic’s nuclear weapons program two decades ago.