A Japanese and a Norwegian tanker was set ablaze on Thursday– it is the second time in the past few weeks that tankers appear to have been attacked in the region.
Yutaka Katada, the owner of one of the stricken fuel tankers crippled in explosions in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday, says the U.S. is wrong about the way the attack was carried out.
Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo on Friday, he contradicted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the U.S. Navy, which released a video that purports to show an Iranian patrol boat removing a limpet mine from the port side of the Kokuka Courageous.
According to DailyBeast, citing Katada’s presser, his ship was attacked on the starboard side by a flying object, not by a mine. “It seems that something flew towards them. That created the hole, is the report I’ve received,” Katada said, according to the Financial Times. “It seems there was a high chance they were attacked by a flying object. The impact was well above the water. I don’t think it was a torpedo.”
The Japanese ship owner did not say who might be responsible for the attack. Iran has vehemently denied it was involved.
The UK Foreign Office said, reports BBC, it was “almost certain” that a branch of the Iranian military – the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – attacked the two tankers on 13 June, adding that “no other state or non-state actor could plausibly have been responsible”.
“These latest attacks build on a pattern of destabilizing Iranian behavior and pose a serious danger to the region,” said Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt. Hunt said responsibility for Thursday’s attacks “almost certainly” lies with the Iranian regime.
However, in a tweet, Mr Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Labor party, questioned that assessment and said the UK should ease tensions in the region, not fuel a military escalation.
President Trump says “Iran did it”, while Hunt says the Iranian regime was “almost certainly” behind it.
There is this narrowest of differences in how the US and its closest ally, Britain, are ascribing blame over the tanker attack.
