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Drone Hits Israeli-Linked Tanker; Iran Frees 2 Greek Tankers

Two ships seen in the Arabian Sea. AP file photo
Two ships seen in the Arabian Sea. AP file photo
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Drone Hits Israeli-Linked Tanker; Iran Frees 2 Greek Tankers

Two ships seen in the Arabian Sea. AP file photo
Two ships seen in the Arabian Sea. AP file photo

An oil tanker associated with an Israeli billionaire has been struck by a bomb-carrying drone off the coast of Oman amid heightened tensions with Iran, officials said Wednesday. Meanwhile, Greece said Iran freed two Greek oil tankers held by Tehran since May. 

The drone attack on the Liberian-flagged oil tanker Pacific Zircon happened Tuesday night off the coast of Oman, one Mideast-based defense official told The Associated Press. The official was not authorized to discuss the attack publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. 

The Pacific Zircon is operated by Singapore-based Eastern Pacific Shipping, which is a company ultimately owned by Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer. 

In a statement, Eastern Pacific Shipping said the Pacific Zircon, carrying gas oil, had been “hit by a projectile” some 150 miles (240 kilometers) off the coast of Oman. 

“We are in communication with the vessel and there is no reports of injuries or pollution. All crew are safe and accounted for,” the company said. “There is some minor damage to the vessel’s hull but no spillage of cargo or water ingress.” 

An Israeli official, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to discuss unpublicized details of the attack, said that it appeared Iran carried out the attack with a Shahed-136 exploding drone. Iran has supplied those drones to Russia, which has been using them to target infrastructure and civilian targets in Ukraine. 

“It is an Iranian attack, there is a consensus on this in the Israeli intelligence and defense community,” the official said. 

Iran's government did not acknowledge the attack on the Pacific Zircon. Iran's mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The strike came hours after the US Navy announced it found 70 tons of a missile fuel component hidden among bags of fertilizer aboard a ship bound to Yemen from Iran, a major seizure potentially disrupting the Iranian-backed Houthis' ballistic missile program there. 

Oil prices rose slightly as news of the attack spread, with benchmark Brent crude trading above $94 a barrel. 

Later Wednesday, Greek officials said two of Greek oil tankers — Delta Poseidon and Prudent Warrior — had been freed, along with their sailors. 

Tracking data from MarineTraffic.com showed the vessels sailing away from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas where they had been held since May after being seized in a helicopter-borne raid by Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. 

Their seizure came after Greece assisted the United States in attempting to seize oil days earlier from the Iranian-flagged tanker Lana to enforce American sanctions. 

“Today is a very pleasant day for our sailors, but also for Greece in general, since an unpleasant and particularly complex case came to an end, following systematic efforts by the Greek government,” Greek Shipping Minister Giannis Plakiotakis said in a statement. 

Iran's Foreign Ministry later acknowledged the release of the Greek tankers, saying that the ships and the Iranian vessel detained by Greece previously had all left for their destinations. 

While no one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack off the coast of Oman, suspicion immediately fell on Iran. Tehran and Israel have been engaged in a yearslong shadow war in the wider Middle East, with some drone attacks targeting Israeli-associated vessels traveling around the region. 

The US also blamed Iran for a series of attacks occurring off the coast of the United Arab Emirates in 2019. Tehran at the time had begun escalating its nuclear program following the unilateral US withdraw from Iran's atomic deal with world powers. 

In 2021, a suspected Iranian drone strike hit the Israeli-associated oil tanker Mercer Street off Oman, killing two people onboard. 

It wasn't immediately clear where the vessel was Wednesday. Satellite-tracking data from late Tuesday provided by MarineTraffic.com put the vessel deep in the Arabian Sea after leaving the Omani port of Sohar. 

Since the collapse of Iran's nuclear deal, nonproliferation experts warn the country now has enough enriched uranium to make at least one nuclear weapon if it chose, though Tehran insists its program is peaceful. 

Iran also has been lashing out at its perceived enemies abroad amid monthslong nationwide protests now challenging its theocracy. 

Torbjorn Soltvedt, an analyst at the risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, said the attack “does not come as a surprise.” 

“The risk of attacks against shipping and energy infrastructure in the wider region is rising mainly due to the lack of progress in US-Iranian nuclear diplomacy and the decision by the Washington to apply further sanctions pressure on Iran,” he said. “Since 2019, Iran has consistently responded to new US sanctions with covert military action in the region.” 

“There is not just an increasing risk of disruptive attacks against energy infrastructure in the region, but also a growing risk of a wider military confrontation with more serious consequences for world energy markets,” he added. 

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Despite Sharp Decline, Inflation Remains a Sore Point for Harris

Democratic presidential nominee and US Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a speech at The Alan Horwitz "Sixth Man" Center, a youth basketball facility, as she campaigns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US October 27, 2024. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Democratic presidential nominee and US Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a speech at The Alan Horwitz "Sixth Man" Center, a youth basketball facility, as she campaigns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US October 27, 2024. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
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Despite Sharp Decline, Inflation Remains a Sore Point for Harris

Democratic presidential nominee and US Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a speech at The Alan Horwitz "Sixth Man" Center, a youth basketball facility, as she campaigns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US October 27, 2024. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Democratic presidential nominee and US Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a speech at The Alan Horwitz "Sixth Man" Center, a youth basketball facility, as she campaigns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US October 27, 2024. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

For six months or so in 2021, as vaccines paved an economic reopening from the COVID-19 pandemic and fresh waves of federal benefits flowed to household bank accounts, President Joe Biden's administration reaped the benefit with an approval rating pinned above 50%.
It has been mired around 40% ever since, with the scarring impact of subsequently high inflation still cited by voters as a major issue even though the pace of price increases has declined, wages and the economy continue to grow, and the jobless rate remains low, Reuters said.
As good as the economy might seem across most major indicators, inflation that peaked at 9% more than two years ago has been hard for Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to outrun, and given former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump a cudgel that remains effective on the eve of the election even as inflation has dwindled to 2.4%.
"Inflation has not faded as an issue," said Justin McCarthy, a spokesperson for Gallup, the polling giant that fields monthly surveys that include an open-ended question, without lists or prompts, of what respondents feel is the "most important" issue facing them. Those citing inflation as the most serious issue has fallen from highs of around 20% during the peak inflation surge in 2022 to around 15% in recent polls, but that remains double the historic norm and is part of broader concern about the economy cited by more than 40% of respondents.
It's an area where Trump continues to hold a polling edge despite Harris' pledges to address issues like high housing costs or the "price gouging" she cites as a cause of high prices in the grocery aisle.
In a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, 68% of respondents in seven swing states said the cost of living was "on the wrong track," and 61% said the same about the economy. Half said Trump had "a better plan, policy or approach" to managing the economy compared with 37% for Harris, while on inflation Trump was favored 47% to 34%.
In-person voting concludes on Tuesday, with polls showing an overall tight race between Harris and Trump nationally and in the battleground states seen as determining the outcome.
The Biden administration and later the Harris campaign recognized early on the problem inflation posed.
Biden named one of his signature pieces of legislation the "Inflation Reduction Act," though much of it focused on subsidies for electric vehicles and clean energy. As rising rent and housing prices emerged as a particularly acute issue, they launched proposals that included capping rent increases, tax incentives for affordable housing construction, and downpayment help for first-time home buyers.
What they didn't publicize so much is how sticky a problem it would be for the households living through it.
Attitudes improved somewhat as inflation began to ease last year, but the change only went so far.
'UNAMBIGUOUSLY NEGATIVE'
Solutions have been offered by both campaigns, but inflation, the responsibility first and foremost of the Federal Reserve through its management of interest rates and credit conditions, is difficult for elected officials to address.
Republican President Richard Nixon tried the direct route by freezing wage and price increases for 90 days in 1971 and establishing a government panel to approve them after that. Inflation was 4.3% at the time and did fall below 4% in the summer of 1972 as Nixon campaigned for reelection.
But it soared that fall as the controls were eased, and following an embargo by Arab oil exporters in 1973 exceeded 12% by the end of 1974.
When inflation started rising during his term in office, Democratic President Jimmy Carter used a major address in 1978 to announce plans to limit government spending and call for voluntary wage and price limits from business. By the middle of his losing reelection bid against Republican Ronald Reagan prices were rising more than 14% annually.
After two recessions, a period of punishing interest rates imposed by the Fed and its firmer commitment to inflation control, price increases gradually settled close to the 2% level the central bank eventually adopted as its official target - and stayed there until the COVID-19 pandemic.
Economists have sparred over the exact reasons inflation took off beginning in 2021, and if that could have been prevented. But they generally agree on the broad mix. As the pandemic limited spending on in-person services, it also created deep backlogs in the manufacture and delivery of the goods, from bikes to appliances to automobiles, that were suddenly in high demand as a result of roughly $5 trillion in stimulus from the federal government.
The pandemic support began under Trump; Biden added more in a move some economists feel may have supercharged demand beyond what was needed.
It is a debate being litigated in hindsight and in the shadow of a health crisis that lingered long enough - new COVID variants were still suppressing in-person gatherings through 2021 - to even implicate the Fed. Inflation took off in 2021; the central bank did not raise rates until March 2022.
What doesn't seem in doubt is the impact on the public mood, something that shouldn't be a surprise.
Surveys about inflation have been consistent in finding that price shocks register deeply and are not quickly forgotten.
"Inflation significantly complicates household decision-making, which is seen as its most critical consequence," researchers Alberto Binetti of Bocconi University and Francesco Nuzzi and Stefanie Stantcheva of Harvard University concluded from the results of an online survey of 2,264 people conducted between March and May. "This complexity affects daily economic choices" and adds to economic uncertainty.
Nor do people seem to care much if, as has happened recently and Democrats have tried to emphasize, wages rise faster than prices.
"Inflation is perceived as an unambiguously negative phenomenon without any potential positive economic correlates," they found, with people expecting it to be fixed "without significant trade-offs."