A commercial oil tanker was set ablaze in the Strait of Hormuz after it was struck by an Iranian suicide drone, the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Saturday, with a US Navy mission to safeguard ships through the region possibly still weeks away.
The IRGC claimed the tanker — the Prima, sailing under a Maltese flag — had ignored repeated warnings not to enter the strait,according to Tasnim News Agency, Iran’s state media.
The flow of oil through the strait — one of the world’s most vital energy arteries connecting the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea which sees roughly 20 million barrels of oil, about 20% of global supply, pass through it daily — has ground to a near-total halt since Iran declared it closed at the start of the war.
As a result, US oil prices shot up $20 a barrel in just a week,surging to $90 a barrelFriday, sparking recession fears if the US doesn’t neutralize the IRGC’s threat in the region soon.
Late Saturday, President Trump downplayed concerns about spiking oil prices.
“That’ll get healed very quickly,” he said aboard Air Force One.
The president wouldn’t directly say what steps, if any, he planned to to take to tackle rising gas and oil prices — including authorizing a release from the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
“There were some I would do it, just to take a little of the pressure off. But I think that – the oil pressure, but there’s a lot of oil. We’ve got a lot of oil,” he said.
The strait, which sits between Iran and Oman, is governed by international maritime law that is supposed to guarantee everyone passage. But historically, Iran has had the greatest ability to influence passage through itduring times of conflict.
After the killing of theIran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic vowed to retaliate by targeting the critical route.
Source: Drudge Report
