The US Navy said Monday that its sailors and the British Royal Navy provided assistance to a ship in the Strait of Hormuz after it was harassed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Three fast-attack patrol ships with armed soldiers on board approached the merchant vessel at close range Sunday afternoon, the US Navy said in a statement.
The U.S. Navy showed black-and-white images it said came from its Boeing B-8 Poseidon aircraft overhead, which showed three small ships near the merchant vessel.

AMERICAN RESPONSE

According to the Associated Press, the U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS McFaul and the Royal Navy frigate HMS Lancaster responded to the incident, with Lancaster launching a helicopter.

“The situation eased about an hour later when the merchant vessel confirmed that the fast attack vessel had left the scene and the merchant vessel continued to cross the Strait of Hormuz without further incident,” the navy said.

While the Navy did not identify the vessel in question, ship tracking data from MarineTraffic.com analyzed by the Associated Press showed that the Marshall Islands-flagged bulk cargo vessel Venture had intermittently diverted its course while traveling across the strait at the time of the incident.

The U.S. agency said its location also matched information about the incident provided by U.K. Naval Trade Operations, a British military operation that oversees traffic in the area, and also resembles images published by the U.S. Navy.

Maritime incidents

According to the US agency, this latest incident follows a series of maritime incidents involving Iran after the US unilaterally withdrew from the Tehran nuclear agreement with world powers in 2018.
The suspected U.S. seizure of the tanker Soyuz Rajan, linked to a U.S. private equity firm believed to have been transporting sanctioned Iranian crude oil off Singapore, may have sparked Tehran’s recent seizure of the Marshall Islands-flagged tanker Advancing Sweet. The ship loaded Kuwaiti crude oil for the energy company ChevronCorp in San Ramon, California, and while authorities have not acknowledged the Swissair seizure, the ship is now off the coast of Galveston, Texas, it said.