RPT: ANALYSIS - Iran's Alleged Attempt To Seize UK Tanker Could Cause Limited Regional Escalation

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 12th July, 2019) Iran's alleged attempt to seize a UK tanker near the Strait of Hormuz may cause escalation in the Persian Gulf but the sides are unlikely to go beyond an "oil tanker war," experts told Sputnik on Thursday.

Earlier in the day, CNN reported, citing US officials, that five gunboats belonging to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) attempted to seize a UK oil tanker near the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday but they were stopped from doing so by a UK warship, which issued "verbal warnings" to the Iranian ships. The UK Defense Ministry later confirmed the reports, but Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif firmly refuted them, noting that such claims were aimed at escalating tensions. The IRGC has said that its ships had no encounters with foreign vessels over the past 24 hours.

While the IRGC and Zarif have denied the reports, one should also keep in mind that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has warned London of consequences after the seizure of an Iranian oil tanker in Gibraltar, Muhammad Sahimi, professor at the University of Southern California and an Iran analyst, told Sputnik.

On July 4, UK Marines and Gibraltar authorities seized Iranian supertanker Grace 1 for allegedly transporting oil to Syria in breach of EU sanctions against Damascus. Rouhani called the recent detention of Grace 1 and its cargo a "very wrong move" and warned London of consequences of such actions that undermine security.

"So, I would not be surprised if it did happen," Sahimi concluded.

The information looks very solid, as it is coming from multiple sources, Kanishkan Sathasivam, professor of international relations at the Department of Political Science at the Salem State University in Massachusetts, told Sputnik.

"There was a story just yesterday that the Iranians were looking to implement a plan to charge ships going through the Straits of Hormuz, so this would fit with that story. The fact that they tried to force the ship to move into Iranian territorial waters is another clue about what they're trying to do," he said.

"If the incident did take place, this could be the beginning of a new oil tanker war, reminiscent of what we had in 1987-1988 toward the end of the Iran-Iraq war," Sahimi said.

If such a war begins, the West will be responsible for it, he stressed.

"On the one hand, the United States and Britain talk about freedom of navigation in international waters, and, on the other hand, they commit acts of piracy, seizing illegally oil tankers that were not even sailing with Iranian flag. This could lead to a very dangerous situation," Sahimi explained.

Clearly, the Iranians are angry about US sanctions which are having a significant impact on them, and are very frustrated about lack of option either to bypass sanctions or retaliate, Sathasivam noted.

"So this seems like a very poorly thought out attempt to lash out at the international community," he supposed.

Sathasivam believes that it is inevitable now that the United States and the United Kingdom, and possibly other states as well, will send warships to the region to monitor and prevent similar future Iranian actions.

"Even in this incident, the nearby presence of a UK warship made a huge difference in thwarting the Iranian action," he said.

The only thing that could ease tensions would be Tehran's decision to avoid such actions, Sathavisam noted.

After testing the United States several times in the Persian Gulf region, Tehran has realized that President [Donald] Trump is not in war mood," Alam Saleh, a lecturer in middle East politics at Lancaster University, told Sputnik.

"Tehran rightly knows that no other power but the United States has the strength to invade Iran so effectively," he noted.

But any war against Iran will be bilateral, long, illegal, and very costly for the global economy, not to mention Gulf Arab states, he said.

"The United States and its Western allies therefore have no option open to them but adding greater economic pressures on Iran. Iran, as a bargaining power, however, has no option but to increase the tension in the region, hoping that prolonging such regional insecurity would frustrate and deter Western powers from further economic and political pressures," Saleh said.

Iran knows the red lines very well, and knows how to create a mess in the region without crossing them, he added.

Maintaining the tension in a neither-war-nor-peace mode seems to be suitable both for Tehran and Washington, while the United Kingdom needs to politically ally itself with the United States once again in the Middle East, Saleh concluded.