Israel will “send a message to Iran in our own way,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned, following Iran’s attack on an Israeli-owned tanker in the Gulf of Oman last week.
An Iranian suicide drone is believed to have hit the oil tanker Mercer Street on Thursday night, a ship operated by Zodiac Maritime, a company belonging to Israeli tycoon Eyal Ofer, killing a British and Romanian national.
Speaking at the beginning of the Cabinet meeting on Sunday, Bennett said that “the world recently received a reminder of Iranian aggression, this time on the high seas. The Iranians, who attacked the ship ‘Mercer Street’ with unmanned aerial vehicles, intended to attack an Israeli target. Instead, their act of piracy led to the deaths of a British citizen and a Romanian citizen.”
However, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh denied Iran’s involvement in the incident.
Asked about the accusations that Iran was responsible for the attack, he said that “the illegitimate occupying regime must put an end to false accusations against Iran.”
“This is not the first time that the regime [Israel] makes these accusations,” he added. “The officials of the regime must come to sense that they will not achieve anything by using the distractions.”
Responding to the denial, Bennett said that “Iran, in a cowardly manner, is trying to evade responsibility for the event. They are denying this.”
“I determine, with absolute certainty – Iran carried out the attack against the ship. Iran’s thuggishness endangers not only Israel, but also harms global interests, namely freedom of navigation and international trade,” he declared.
“The intelligence evidence for this exists and we expect the international community will make it clear to the Iranian regime that they have made a serious mistake. In any case, we know how to send a message to Iran in our own way,” he stated ominously.
Amos Yadlin, a former general in the Israeli Air Force (IAF) and former head of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, explained that the attack “illustrates the Iranian operational weakness in issuing targeted responses in the northern arena,” meaning attacking Israel from Syria or Lebanon.
Iran “shot itself in the foot” by hitting a civilian ship and killing two European civilians, he noted, “demonstrating to the international community that it is a terrorist state that violates shipping freedom and the world economy.”
In recent months, several other Israeli ships have come under apparent Iranian attacks on various maritime routes in the Middle East.
In February, an Israeli-owned ship was hit by an explosion in the sea of Oman. In April, another Israeli ship came under attack off the coast of the United Arad Emirates.
(TPS).