Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has detained a Panama-flagged oil tanker that the elite military force said was carrying 300,000 litres of illegal oil.
The 10 foreign crew members were arrested, and the case has been handed over to prosecutors in the port city of Parsian, an IRGC spokesman said on Friday, the Fars news agency reported.
Neither the time of the tanker’s detention in the Gulf nor the nationalities of the detained crew were mentioned by the spokesperson.
Iran has confiscated several ships and tankers in the Gulf that it says were trying to smuggle oil to the Arab Gulf states.
Last July, the seizure of an Iranian oil tanker, the Adrian Darya 1, formerly the Grace 1, and a British tanker led to a debate on using the military to protect such ships in the Gulf.
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