- A drone armed with a bomb hit an oil tanker off the coast of Oman on Tuesday evening.
- An Israeli government official has said that they believe Iran is responsible for the strike.
A bomb-carrying drone hit an oil tanker owned by an Israeli billionaire off the coast of Oman on Tuesday evening.
The Pacific Zircon tanker, managed by Singapore-based Eastern Pacific Shipping — a company ultimately owned by Israeli businessman Idan Ofer — was hit by a bomb-carrying drone, a Mideast-based defense official told AP.
Eastern Pacific Shipping has said that the Pacific Zircon sailing under a Liberian flag and carrying a cargo of gas oil, "was hit by a projectile approximately 150 miles off the coast of Oman," adding that there are no reports of injuries to the crew.
The company said there had been "minor damage to the vessel's hull," but there was no "spillage of cargo," referring to the gas oil the tanker was carrying.
Speaking to AP on a condition of anonymity, an Israeli government official has said that they believe Iran is responsible for the strike, adding that they used a Shahed-136 exploding drone in the attack.
"It is an Iranian attack. There is a consensus on this in the Israeli intelligence and defense community," the official told AP.
The Iranian government has supplied Shahed drones – often referred to as "suicide drones"– to the Russian military for use in Ukraine.
However, no one has claimed responsibility for the Oman drone attack. Due to tensions between Iran and Israel, Tehran's possible involvement in the attack is suspected.
Torbjorn Soltvedt, an analyst at the risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, told AP that the attack "does not come as a surprise." The current risks faced within the shipping and energy industry are "rising mainly due to the lack of progress in US-Iranian nuclear diplomacy and the decision by Washington to apply further sanctions pressure on Iran."
The attack happened a day after the US Navy discovered a "massive amount" of explosives — enough to fuel a dozen ballistic missiles — hidden on board a fishing boat sailing from Iran to Yemen.