WhatsappThe largest warship in the Iranian navy, the Kharg, caught fire and later sank Wednesday in the Gulf of Oman under unclear circumstances, semiofficial news agencies reported.
May Israel be behind it? We don’t know and we might never know. Regardless of whether it was deliberate sabotage or an accident at sea, we are happy to see the military capabilities of the Muslim Republic of Iran take a hit. This Shiite Islamic regime is the largest state-sponsor of terror in the world that not only strategizes to destroy Israel and the USA, but to destroy the West as well as Iran’s Sunni Muslim enemies in the Middle East as well.
Iranian State TV reported that the blaze began around 2:25 a.m. and firefighters tried to contain it. The ship sank near the Iranian port of Jask, some 790 miles southeast of Tehran in the Gulf of Oman and near the Strait of Hormuz – the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf. Agence France-Presse reported that the navy said firefighting efforts went on for 20 hours before the ship went down. This comes after a series of mysterious naval explosions that began in 2019 targeting international commercial ships in the Gulf of Oman. The U.S. Navy accused Iran of targeting the ships with limpet mines, timed explosives typically attached by divers to a vessel’s hull.
Iran denied that, though U.S. Navy footage showed Revolutionary Guard members removing one unexploded limpet mine from a ship. The attacks came amid heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran after then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
In April, an Iranian ship called the MV Saviz believed to be a Guard base and anchored for years in the Red Sea off Yemen was targeted in an attack suspected to have been carried out by Israel. It escalated a yearslong shadow war in the Mideast between the two countries, ranging from strikes in Syria, assaults on ships and attacks on Iran’s nuclear program.
The sinking of the Kharg marks the latest naval disaster for Iran. In 2020, during an Iranian military training exercise, a missile mistakenly struck a naval vessel near Jask, killing 19 sailors and wounding 15. Also in 2018, an Iranian navy destroyer sank in the Caspian Sea.
