Iran has rejected UN-backed plans for the mass evacuation of ships through the strait of Hormuz, reports the Guardian.
The navy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on June 25 rejected the coordinates of two new temporary shipping evacuation lanes announced by the UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) in conjunction with Oman.
In a June 23 release, IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez proposed a large-scale evacuation of ships carrying more than 11,000 seafarers trapped in the Persian Gulf because of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran. The operation was to involve cooperation between the maritime industry and the U.S., Iran, Oman and other Gulf Coast states. The IMO said the Traffic Separation Scheme, the main channel through the Strait of Hormuz, was not safe, and proposed two “temporary routes” to the North and South of the TSS. According to multiple reports, these have already seen increased ship traffic since the Memorandum of Understanding was signed June 17 by the U.S. and Iran.
At the time, Dominguez did not specify a time frame for the evacuation process, only that ships would be contacted individually with information about their “allocated transit day.”
On June 25, the IRGC warned vessels not to use what it called an “unapproved” shipping lane through the Strait of Hormuz, saying the route was created without Tehran’s consent and ships must use Iranian-designated corridors or risk enforcement action, according to Al-Jazeera.
The Guardian says that the proposal, backed by Oman, was potentially the first phase of a wider Omani proposal to consult on setting up a new management system for the strait, based on voluntary fees and modelled on mechanisms in place in the Malacca and Singapore straits.
