IRAN fired on three ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, underscoring the ongoing threat to global energy supplies and complicating efforts to bring the United States and Iran together for talks to end the war. Iranian media said, the attacks were carried out by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, Iran opened fire on a container ship in the strait on Wednesday morning, and a second was attacked a short time later, according to the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre. Iranian state television reported later reported that the ships were in the Revolutionary Guard’s custody and being taken to Iran. It identified the vessels as the MSC Francesca and the Epaminodes. The ship’s owners could not be immediately reached for comment. Ship Epaminondas was signalling Mundra port in Gujarat as its destination, according to vessel-tracking data from maritime intelligence firm MarineTraffic.

 

The ship is sailing under the flag of Liberia and ‘is currently located in the Oman Gulf’, it said in an 18.30 IST update. Information on its owner and the cargo it is carrying for was not immediately available. The seizures represent an escalation by Iran’s leaders, who appear poised to drive a harder bargain with American negotiators after two other rounds of talks with the Trump administration ended in open warfare. The semiofficial Nour News, Fars and Mehr news agencies then reported the Guard attacked a third vessel called the Euphoria. They said the vessel had become “stranded” on the Iranian coast, without elaborating. The UKMTO said the first ship was attacked by a Revolutionary Guard gunboat that did not hail the ship before firing. It added that nobody was hurt in the attack. Iran’s Nour News, however, reported that the Guard only opened fire on the ship after it had “ignored the warnings of the Iranian Armed Forces”. Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency described the attack as Iran “lawfully enforcing” its control over the Strait of Hormuz. There have been more than 30 attacks on ships in the Mideast since the war began on February 28 with US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran. Iran’s ability to restrict traffic through the strait - which leads from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean - has proved a major strategic advantage.