Iran says a ship sank after striking a mine in Strait of Hormuz

Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Iran said Wednes­day that a car­go ship has sunk af­ter hit­ting a naval mine in the Strait of Hor­muz.

Mean­while, a top Iran­ian of­fi­cial said Iran must be pre­pared for war even as it is ne­go­ti­at­ing with the U.S.

Iran says a car­go ship sank af­ter hit­ting a naval mine

A car­go ship sank af­ter strik­ing a naval mine in the Strait of Hor­muz, Iran’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps navy said. It was the first time Iran had re­port­ed a ship sink­ing af­ter hit­ting a mine dur­ing the war.

Ship­ping of­fi­cials, mean­while, said two Sin­ga­pore-reg­is­tered car­go ves­sels had been hit by “un­known pro­jec­tiles” as they went through the strait on Tues­day and Wednes­day. One sank, while the oth­er reached safe­ty. All crew mem­bers were evac­u­at­ed from the first ship, and no in­juries were re­port­ed in ei­ther in­ci­dent, the Mar­itime and Port Au­thor­i­ty of Sin­ga­pore said.

“Such at­tacks are un­pro­voked, un­jus­ti­fi­able, and a breach of in­ter­na­tion­al law,” the au­thor­i­ty said.

It was un­clear, how­ev­er, if the Sin­ga­pore-flagged ves­sel that sank was the same ship Iran said had struck a mine.

There were few de­tails from Iran­ian of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing about the fate of the crew. State tele­vi­sion quot­ed a Guard state­ment say­ing the ship was trav­el­ing on what it called an il­le­gal and dan­ger­ous route when it hit the mine Wednes­day morn­ing. The As­so­ci­at­ed Press couldn’t in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy the im­ages.

The uniden­ti­fied ship, which was shown tilt­ed in the wa­ter and spew­ing a thick plume of smoke, was car­ry­ing 2,500 con­tain­ers, the broad­cast said.

Iran has re­peat­ed­ly warned ships against try­ing to tran­sit through the strait with­out its ap­proval. The U.S. mil­i­tary has been guid­ing ships through the strait on a route near­er to Oman’s coast.

Top Iran of­fi­cial says coun­try must pre­pare for war as it ne­go­ti­ates

Iran must be pre­pared for war even as it ne­go­ti­ates with the U.S., the coun­try’s par­lia­ment speak­er said Wednes­day.

Mo­ham­mad Bagher Qal­ibaf said in a tele­vised speech that his coun­try’s main con­cern is pre­vent­ing the Unit­ed States from at­tack­ing again. But, he added, a signed agree­ment with Wash­ing­ton is no guar­an­tee.

“They break their promis­es,” said Qal­ibaf. As a re­sult, Iran must be pre­pared to fight “against a bul­ly­ing en­e­my,” and “we must tru­ly fight coura­geous­ly on the bat­tle­field.”

“That is when we will have achieved sus­tain­able de­ter­rence,” he said. “Amer­i­ca must be pun­ished. Amer­i­ca must change its be­hav­iour. It must un­der­stand that it has to come to terms with the Iran­ian peo­ple.”