State television says Revolutionary Guards confiscated 1.3 million litres of ‘smuggled fuel’ from unnamed vessel.

Iran’ Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has seized a ship suspected of fuel smuggling and arrested 16 Malaysian crew members, state media reported late on Monday.

The website of IRIB state television said the IRGC confiscated 1.3 million litres of “smuggled fuel” from the unnamed vessel 15 nautical miles from Abu Musa island.

“The ship’s 16 crew who are of Malaysian nationality were arrested,” the IRGC’s naval commander for the region, Brigadier General Ali Ozmayi, was quoted as saying.

Abu Musa is one of three islands in the southern Gulf that are under Iranian control but claimed by the United Arab Emirates.

“This is the sixth ship smuggling fuel that (the IRGC) navy has confiscated,” added Ozmayi.

In September, Iran seized a boat and arrested 12 Filipino crewmen from a suspected fuel-smuggling ring in the Strait of Hormuz, state media reported.

The IRGC detained a “foreign tanker” in Gulf waters on July 14 for allegedly smuggling contraband fuel.

Iran also seized another ship on July 31 with seven foreign crew aboard over fuel smuggling, but it never revealed the vessel’s identity or the nationality of its crew.

Tensions have been high in the Gulf this year, after the United States stepped up a stated campaign of “maximum pressure” on Iran following US withdrawal from a landmark nuclear deal in 2018.

The escalation saw ships mysteriously attacked, drones downed and oil tankers seized in the Strait of Hormuz – a chokepoint for one-third of the world’s seaborne oil.

On July 19, the IRGC seized the British-flagged oil tanker Stena Impero for allegedly hitting a fishing boat and released it two months later.