Iran releases videos of ship seizure in Hormuz

In one of the videos, masked soldiers approach a container ship with the inscription MSC on the side, climb a ladder and board the cargo ship.

Previously, Iran had disclosed that it had detained two vessels, the MSC Francesca (Panama-flagged) and the Epaminodes (Liberian-flagged), claiming that they “put maritime security at risk by operating without the necessary authorization and tampering with navigation systems.”

Before being seized, the two ships would have been targets of fire, as well as a Liberian-flagged ship, the Euphoria, which was not seized and returned to sail, according to maritime authorities.

According to information from the EFE agency, the vice-president of Iran’s Parliament, Hamidreza Haji Babaei, stated this Thursday (23) that the first payments of tolls charged to ships for transit through the Strait of Hormuz began to be deposited at the country’s Central Bank.

Iran announced its intention to formalize charging for transit through the strategic maritime passage with the approval of a bill, which received the green light from a parliamentary committee and which must still be voted on in the Chamber plenary.

The text does not detail how much the tolls in the strait would reach, but the Tasnim news agency, linked to the Revolutionary Guard, stated that it could be a payment of US$2 million per ship or a system based on the load of each vessel, as in the Suez Canal.

Tasnim estimates that Iran could earn around US$100 billion annually through these tolls, an amount higher than revenues from its oil sales, estimated at around US$80 billion.

This Wednesday (22), the president of Iran’s Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, once again said that Tehran will only negotiate with the United States and Israel to end the war, which began on February 28 and has been in a tense ceasefire since the 7th, if the US naval blockade of Iranian ports is lifted.

“You have not achieved your objectives through military aggression and you will not achieve them through intimidation,” Ghalibaf wrote on social media. “The only way is to recognize the rights of the Iranian people.”

For now, the US naval blockade has redirected 31 ships from Iran to return to the ports they departed from and two others have been seized.