U.S.-Iran Tensions Appear to Ease in Strait of Hormuz
|
Version 0 of 1. The United States and Iran appeared to be pulling back on Wednesday from any possible confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical Persian Gulf oil-shipping passage, a week after Iranian forces impounded a cargo vessel there at gunpoint. Iranian officials said a civilian lawsuit that they had cited as the basis for the seizure of the cargo vessel, the Maersk Tigris, might be resolved within a few days. In Washington, Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said Navy warships that had been assigned to escort American and British vessels through the strait, a precaution after the seizure of the Maersk Tigris, which is registered in the Marshall Islands, were no longer doing so. The apparent stand-down in the strait, where American and Iranian forces once battled each other in the 1980s, appeared to reflect efforts by both sides not to allow any show of military bravado to complicate and possibly sabotage multilateral diplomatic efforts to reach an agreement on Iran’s contentious nuclear program. Those negotiations face a June 30 deadline. “It’s definitely among the quickest ‘make nice’ episodes in U.S.-Iran relations since the 1979 revolution,” said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting firm in Washington. “Neither the U.S. nor Iran is going to let regional conflict bring down the deal.” Tensions escalated quickly after the Maersk Tigris episode, in which gunboats of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps diverted the vessel, chartered by Maersk, a Danish shipping company, to an offshore anchorage in southern Iran. Iranian officials said that the vessel and crew would not be released until an old debt case was resolved. Maersk and other shippers were surprised at the Iranian action, which seemed arbitrary, disproportionately tough and oddly timed. Iranian officials, including the foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, insisted that it was nothing more than the country’s attempt to enforce a civil court judgment for unpaid cargo. A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in Tehran, Marzieh Afkham, said at a weekly news briefing on Wednesday that “the negotiations between the private complainant and the other party are going on, and possibly the issue will be resolved in a day or two,” according to accounts in the state news media. Maersk also indicated that there had been progress. In a statement quoted by Reuters, the company said, “We have had a constructive dialogue with the Iranian courts and Ports & Maritime Organization.” Nonetheless, it was unclear when the ship would be allowed to resume its voyage, or even whether its 24-member crew would be permitted to disembark pending resolution of the dispute. Despite the diminished tensions over the seizure of the ship, the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has ultimate authority in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear dispute, reiterated his hostility and suspicion toward the United States in a speech on Wednesday to Iranian teachers, according to Iranian news accounts. |