Iranian special forces seized an Israeli-owned container ship in international waters near the United Arab Emirates on Saturday morning local time. Zodiac Maritime owns the MSC Aries – a container ship of 160,000 tons en route between Khalifa in the UAE and Nhava Sheva in India. The crew consists of 20 Filipinos. Zodiac Maritime, owned by Ofer Global and owned by Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer who lives in Monaco, is owned by Zodiac Maritime.
Iran has seized MSC Aries outbound from UAE to India. She is Maderia International Registry & owned through Zodiac Maritime, a part of Ofer Global, chaired by Eyal Ofer, hence the targeting by the IRGC.
This is similar to the #Houthi capture of Galaxy Leader in Nov. https://t.co/FTJT5LRBhe pic.twitter.com/AVOtKbpbbi
— Sal Mercogliano (WGOW Shipping) 🚢⚓🐪🚒🏴☠️ (@mercoglianos) April 13, 2024
Iranian “commandos”, who had fast-roped themselves onto the deck, boarded the MSC Aries about 50 miles off the coast of the UAE.
According to Iranian media, this ship was taken into Iranian water.
Ofer’s ship is not the only one that has been attacked since the Israel-Hamas War began on October 7. In November, the US Navy rescued M/V Central Park (formerly known as M/V Central Park) from Houthi pirates.
There is a tendency to draw connections between the Iranian attack on Israeli interests and Israel’s splattering of seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders over the walls at the Iranian Embassy in Damascus.
This doesn’t appear to be the situation here. In February 2023, Iran used a drone to attack another Zodiac Maritime ship, the Liberian-flagged tanker M/V Campo Square. It’s hard to understand how pirating an M/V Campo Square, a tanker owned by Zodiac Maritime, with a crew of Filipinos and a flagged ship in Portugal is a significant strike against the Little Satan.
