An oil tanker belonging to Abu Dhabi’s national oil company (ADNOC) came under attack on Friday night in the Strait of Hormuz, according to a statement by the UAE state company cited by the official WAM news agency. “The incident caused no injuries and the situation has been brought under control,” ADNOC said. Several of the company’s tankers have been targeted in attacks in recent days, including on Thursday and the previous week, along this critical maritime route that serves as a key passage for global hydrocarbon trade.
The Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Persian Gulf — where the UAE is located — to the Indian Ocean, has remained effectively closed since early March, when Iran decided to restrict passage in response to the war launched against it by the United States and Israel on February 28.
In retaliation, Washington imposed a blockade on Iranian ports in the Gulf.
The repeated attacks on vessels in the strait have been among the factors contributing to the collapse of the ceasefire that came into effect in April. Mediating countries are calling on the US and Iran to return to compliance with the terms of the so-called Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, the preliminary agreement signed by Presidents Donald Trump and Masoud Pezeshkian in mid-June.
On Friday, Abu Dhabi “strongly condemned” Iran’s attack on two other ADNOC vessels as they were sailing through the Strait of Hormuz.
“The targeting of commercial shipping and the use of the Strait of Hormuz as a tool of economic coercion constitute acts of piracy by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a direct threat to regional stability, its peoples, and global energy security,” the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
Last week, the then-head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Mohammad Bagher Zolqadr, outlined a series of conditions for reopening the strait, chief among them an end to “the war and aggression against Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and Iraq.” He also demanded the lifting of the American naval blockade, in statements carried by the Tasnim news agency.
