The Talara, a Marshall Islands-flagged product tanker, apprehended by the Iranian military on Friday has been tracked down.
The vessel is moored in the Khuran Strait, north of Qeshm Island, a familiar location for vessels hijacked by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to .
State media carried an IRGC statement saying “the tanker was in violation for carrying unauthorized cargo.”
The ship’s manager, Columbia Shipmanagement, said the vessel was carrying a cargo of high-sulphur gasoil, en route to Singapore when contact was lost at around 08:22 local time on Friday, approximately 20 nautical miles off the coast of Khorfakkan, United Arab Emirates.
This marks the first Iranian hijacking of a commercial vessel this year. The last confirmed hijacking of a commercial vessel by Iranian military forces was in April 2024, when Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seized the MSC Aries, a Portuguese-flagged container ship, via a helicopter-borne operation in international waters.
