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Iran Releases Oil Tanker into International Waters after 1 Year of Detention

A screengrab shows Iranian commandos seizing China’s US-bound oil tanker Advantage Sweet on Thursday. Iranian Army office/AFP via Getty Images
A screengrab shows Iranian commandos seizing China’s US-bound oil tanker Advantage Sweet on Thursday. Iranian Army office/AFP via Getty Images
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Iran Releases Oil Tanker into International Waters after 1 Year of Detention

A screengrab shows Iranian commandos seizing China’s US-bound oil tanker Advantage Sweet on Thursday. Iranian Army office/AFP via Getty Images
A screengrab shows Iranian commandos seizing China’s US-bound oil tanker Advantage Sweet on Thursday. Iranian Army office/AFP via Getty Images

A Chevron-chartered oil tanker seized by Iran more than a year ago is heading toward the Sohar port in Oman, ship tracking data from the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) showed on Friday.
The data showed the vessel moving to international waters, with the destination showing as Khor Fakkan in the United Arab Emirates.
The Marshall Islands-flagged Advantage Sweet was boarded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the Gulf of Oman in April 2023 after an alleged collision with an Iranian boat.
The US State Department called in March for the immediate release of the tanker. In the same month, the Fars news agency said Iran would unload about $50 million worth of crude from it in response to the confiscation of oil by the United States from an Iranian-flagged tanker.
The Advantage Sweet is a Suezmax crude tanker that had been chartered by oil major Chevron.
Iran said it had seized the Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman after it collided with an Iranian boat.
The US Treasury Department reported at the time that the proceeds of Iranian oil smuggling were being used to support the Qods Force, the foreign arm of the Revolutionary Guards charged with intelligence and military operations in the Middle East.
Compensations to Iran
The release of the tanker came after an Iranian court earlier on Thursday ordered the US government to pay more than $6.7 billion in compensation over a Swedish company stopping its supply of special dressings and bandages for those afflicted by a rare skin disorder after Washington imposed sanctions on Iran.
Iran’s government initially said it seized the Advantage Sweet because it hit another vessel, something not supported by any evidence. Then Iranian officials linked the Advantage Sweet’s seizure to the court case decided Thursday.
The US in response said it had exempted humanitarian goods, especially medicines and medical equipment, from its sanctions.
The developments follow the recent election of the reformist President-elect Masoud Pezeshkian, who has vowed to improve relations with the West.

 

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Iran's President Visits Those Injured in Port Explosion that Killed at Least 28 People

A helicopter drops water on the fire, Sunday, April 27, 2025, after a massive explosion and fire rocked a port near the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, Iran on Saturday. (AP Photo/Meysam Mirzadeh/Tasnim News)
A helicopter drops water on the fire, Sunday, April 27, 2025, after a massive explosion and fire rocked a port near the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, Iran on Saturday. (AP Photo/Meysam Mirzadeh/Tasnim News)
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Iran's President Visits Those Injured in Port Explosion that Killed at Least 28 People

A helicopter drops water on the fire, Sunday, April 27, 2025, after a massive explosion and fire rocked a port near the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, Iran on Saturday. (AP Photo/Meysam Mirzadeh/Tasnim News)
A helicopter drops water on the fire, Sunday, April 27, 2025, after a massive explosion and fire rocked a port near the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, Iran on Saturday. (AP Photo/Meysam Mirzadeh/Tasnim News)

Iran's president visited those injured Sunday in a huge explosion that rocked one of the Islamic Republic's main ports, a facility purportedly linked to an earlier delivery of a chemical ingredient used to make missile propellant.

The visit by President Masoud Pezeshkian came as the toll from Saturday's blast at the Shahid Rajaei port outside of Bandar Abbas in southern Iran's Hormozgan province rose to 28 killed and about 1,000 others injured.

Iranian state television described the fire as being under control, saying emergency workers hoped that it would be fully extinguished later Sunday. Overnight, helicopters and heavy cargo aircraft flew repeated sorties over the burning port, dumping seawater on the site, The AP news reported.

Pir Hossein Kolivand, head of Iran’s Red Crescent society offered the death toll and number of injured in a statement carried by an Iranian government website, saying that only 190 of the injured remained hospitalized on Sunday. The provincial governor declared three days of mourning.

Private security firm Ambrey says the port received missile fuel chemical in March. It was part of a shipment of ammonium perchlorate from China by two vessels to Iran, first reported in January by the Financial Times. The chemical used to make solid propellant for rockets was going to be used to replenish Iran’s missile stocks, which had been depleted by its direct attacks on Israel during the war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Ship-tracking data analyzed by The AP put one of the vessels believed to be carrying the chemical in the vicinity in March, as Ambrey said.

“The fire was reportedly the result of improper handling of a shipment of solid fuel intended for use in Iranian ballistic missiles,” Ambrey said.

In a first reaction on Sunday, Iranian Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Reza Talaeinik denied that missile fuel had been imported through the port.

“No sort of imported and exporting consignment for fuel or military application was (or) is in the site of the port,” he told state television by telephone. He called foreign reports on the missile fuel baseless — but offered no explanation for what material detonated with such incredible force at the site. Talaeinik promised authorities would offer more information later.

It’s unclear why Iran wouldn’t have moved the chemicals from the port, particularly after the Beirut port blast in 2020. That explosion, caused by the ignition of hundreds of tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate, killed more than 200 people and injured more than 6,000 others. However, Israel did target Iranian missile sites where Tehran uses industrial mixers to create solid fuel — meaning potentially that it had no place to process the chemical.

Social media footage of the explosion on Saturday at Shahid Rajaei saw reddish-hued smoke rising from the fire just before the detonation. That suggests a chemical compound being involved in the blast, like in the Beirut explosion.

Meanwhile on Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin deployed several emergency aircraft to Bandar Abbas to provide assistance, Iran's state-run IRNA news agency reported.