Afghan Cleric Sent To Iran As Diplomat Cannot Find Housing For Large Family

Satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press on Friday indicate the completion of the construction of the Shahid Mahdavi support ship, which appears to be a retrofit of an Iranian cargo ship known as the Sarvin.

“They are looking beyond the Persian Gulf and into the blue waters of the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea and the northern Indian Ocean,” Farzin Nadimi, an associate fellow at the Washington Institute for Near-East Policy who studies the Iranian military, told AP.

The Sarvin arrived off Bandar Abbas in late July last year and then switched off its transponders. By Jan. 29, satellite photos analyzed by the AP showed the vessel at drydock at Shahid Darvishi Marine Industries, a company associated with Iran’s Defense Ministry west of Bandar Abbas.

Last Saturday, the IRGC-affiliated Fars News agency said the Guard’s navy was due to commission ‘Shahid Mahdavi’ as a forward base ship that will be among Iran’s largest vessels.

The ship was named in honor of Nader Mahdavi, one of seven IRGC personnel killed in an engagement with the United States navy in October 1987 during the Iran-Iraq war.

Aurora Intel, defense analysts, said the ship – formerly called Savin, Sarita, Dandle, Twelfth Ocean, Iran Esfahan – is a 22-year-old container vessel with a nominal capacity of 3,300 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs).

“The Revolutionary Guards Navy today (Friday) seized two Greek oil tankers for violations they have carried out in the waters of the Persian Gulf,” the IRGC said in a statement on Friday, shortly after Nour News -- a website affiliated to the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Ali Shamkhani -- warned of "punitive action" against Athens due to the seizure. The statement gave no further details about the alleged violations. 

The Greek tankers are Delta Poseidon and Prudent Warrior, and were captured near Asalouyeh off the coasts of Iran’s Bushehr Province and the Hendurabi island near Bandar Lengeh in Hormozgan province, respectively. 

Nour News said on Twitter, "Following the seizure of an Iranian tanker by the Greek government and the transfer of its oil to the Americans, Iran has decided to take punitive action against Greece."

The US Navy’s Mideast-based 5th Fleet said it was “looking into” reports about the seizure of the Greek oil tankers, with Commander Timothy Hawkins telling The Associated Press that the Navy was continuing to investigate, without further elaboration.

A US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Washington Post that the two ships had apparently “come close to — but not in — Iranian territorial waters before the seizure,” adding that the ships also had turned off their tracking devices and neither had issued a mayday or a call for help.

In total, nine Greek nationals have been taken captive by the IRGC following the seizure of the two tankers.

Greek authorities last month impounded the Iranian-flagged Pegas, with 19 Russian crew members on board, near the coast of the southern island of Evia due to EU sanctions. The United States later confiscated the Iranian oil cargo held onboard and chartered a tanker owned by Dynacom Tankers Management to send it to the United States. 

The Pegas was later released because of confusion about the sanctions over its owners. It was unclear whether the cargo was impounded because it was Iranian oil or due to the sanctions on the tanker over its Russian links as the two countries face separate US sanctions.

The aframax Lana, formerly named Pegas, was detained on April 15 by Greek authorities and was identified as the Russian-flagged Pegas and the assumption at the time was that it was laden with Russian crude.

The Pegas was among five vessels designated by Washington on February 22 -- two days before Russia's invasion of Ukraine -- for sanctions against Promsvyazbank, a bank viewed as critical to Russia's defense sector.

Iran's Ports and Maritime Organization said last week that the tanker had sought refuge along the Greek coast after experiencing technical problems and poor weather. It called the seizure of its cargo "a clear example of piracy".

Earlier on Friday, the Iranian foreign ministry summoned a Swiss diplomat in Tehran to protest against the Pegas oil seizure. Switzerland represents US interests after relations were severed between Tehran and Washington in 1980.

"The Islamic Republic expressed its deep concern over the US government's continued violation of international laws and international maritime conventions," state media quoted the foreign ministry as saying.

On Wednesday, the United States imposed sanctions on what it described a Russian-backed oil smuggling and money laundering network for Iran's Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force.

In 2019, Iran seized a British tanker near the Strait of Hormuz for alleged maritime violations two weeks after British forces detained an Iranian tanker near Gibraltar, accusing it of shipping oil to Syria in violation of European Union sanctions.

The NYT says its sources believe quadcopter suicide drones were used in the attack. Given the relatively smaller size of these drones it is not clear if they were launched from inside Iran or a forward base near its borders.

Iranian media on Thursday had reported a fire in Parchin military complex, near the capital Tehran, saying that a young engineer was killed at a defense ministry center developing nuclear, missile and drome technologies.

Although no one has taken responsibility, Israel is strongly suspected of conducting multiple sabotage attacks, and possibly drone strikes, against targets in Iran, and even the assassination of its top nuclear operative in November 2020.

Israeli media attributed one particular striketo an Israeli aerial attack, which reportedly destroyed hundreds of drones at an airbase belonging to the Revolutionary Guard in the Iranian province of Kermanshah in February.

Iran has made notable advances in the past few years in producing effective drones that have been widely used by its proxies throughout the region against Saudi Arabia, in Iraq and against a US base in Syria.

Just three days before this attack, an Iranian Qods (Quds) Force colonel was killed outside his home in Tehran by two gunmen on motorcycle. He was reportedly involved in clandestine terror operations against Israel, which has apparently told the United States it was responsible for the killing.

The Beacon piece is based on a State Department memo apparently unclassified after legal action under the Freedom of Information Act by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a conservative Christian group. The memo records views expressed by then Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in an off-the-record meeting October 2018 at the residence of Iran’s UN ambassador in New York residence with “a group of US former ambassadors and policy analysts.”

Both the Beacon and the ACLJ, which highlighted the memo on its website May 24, see proof of secret dealings between former officials in the Obama administration and Iran to undermine President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Five months earlier, in May 2018, Trump had announced the US would leave the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), reached under the Obama administration, and introduce stringent economic sanctions.

“The meeting took place around the same time John Kerry was reported to be working behind-the-scenes with Iranian officials to salvage the 2015 nuclear accord,” the Beacon noted. The memo, the Beacon argued, was “the firmest proof to date that Obama-era officials were engaged in back-channel efforts to keep negotiations with Iran alive.”

Pompeo ‘was not aware’

The controversy over Obama officials’ links with Iran surfaced back in 2018. Kerry, Obama’s secretary of state when the JCPOA was signed, denied accusations from Pompeo and Trump made in September 2018 that he had met Iranian officials subsequent to the May 2018 Trump decision for the US to leave the JCPOA. Kerry said he had met Zarifafter leaving office in January 2017.

The unclassified memo names no Americans present in the meeting, and such off-the-record meetings are common. Given the memo is a State Department document, it seems certain the meeting was approved at some level within the department. The Beacon, which talked to Pompeo after receiving the memo, reported however that Pompeo “was not aware of these meetings [presumably the meeting recorded in the memo] while leading the State Department” (from April 2018 until January 2021).

The memo records views expressed by Zarif over Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and other regional issues, but nothing of what any of the Americans said. The Iranian foreign minister says he expects Trump to be a two-term president and suggests the US abandoning the JCPOA had shifted Iranian popular opinion towards believing engagement with the US would not work.

‘Back channel pow-wows’

Pompeo, now senior counsel for global affairs at the ACLJ, told the Beacon that the “memo corroborates reports from the time about Kerry's efforts to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal through back-channel pow-wows with Iranian officials.”

Former officials were, Pompeo said, “trying, at every turn, to work with the foreign minister for a terrorist regime, Iran, to undermine the very sanctions put in place by America. It's worse than not knowing when to get off stage. Actively seeking to protect the terrible deal they struck, these former officials – two years after Obama left office – were signaling that Iran should stand firm against America."

The AVLJ says State Department “awareness of or involvement with Obama-era US officials” amounted to “the Deep State.” Its assessment of the memo implies that Kerry, Robert Malley, now the White House special Iran envoy, and Ernest Moniz, energy secretary under Obama, might have been at the meeting, since its release “was only responsive to our FOIA request [request under the Freedom of Information Act] if it involved former high level Obama officials…Kerry…Malley...or…Moniz...”

The story may not be finished. The ACLJ says it will continue litigation to release a 2017 letter from Kerry to Zarif held by the State Department. “We will keep you up to date as this case progresses,” the ACLJ promised Tuesday.

Demanding the immediate release of the seized ship and its confiscated cargo, the Iranian foreign ministry’s department for American Affairs said in a statement on Friday, “The Swiss chargé d'affaires was summoned to convey Iran’s concern and strong protest over the continued violation of international laws and maritime conventions concerning free navigation and trade by the US administration.”

According to the statement, the Swiss envoy assured that he would convey Iran’s message to American officials.

On Wednesday, the Islamic Republic summoned the Greek chargé d'affaires to protest the seizure of the vessel carrying Iranian crude.

The Russia-flagged aframax Lana, formerly named Pegas, was detained on April 15 by Greek authorities and had been waiting at Karistos port pending a court ruling. On Monday afternoon, a tanker owned by Dynacom Tankers Management, called Ice Energy, was chartered by the US Department of Justice and started a ship-to-ship transfer of the US-sanctioned Iranian crude on the basis of Russian sanctions.

The operation, first reported by watchdog group United Against Iran, was verified using Lloyd's List intelligence data.

Lana, which arrived off Greece early in April with reports of a possible mechanical failure and anchored south of the Greek island of Evia, was identified as the Russian-flagged Pegas and the assumption at the time was that it was laden with Russian crude.