Iran has demanded a $170 million fine from the owner of a cargo ship that it seized in last year and accused of having ties to Israel, a judicial official said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Revolutionary Guards, the ideological arm of Iran’s military, intercepted the MSC Aries in April of 2024 and detained its 25 international crew members.<\/p>\n
At the time, the official IRNA news agency said the Portuguese-flagged vessel was “managed by Zodiac, which belongs to the Zionist capitalist Eyal Ofer”.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Iranian judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir said charges had been filed and the case was before the courts, though no date had been set for a trial.<\/p>\n
“A fine of $170 million has been demanded against its owner, of Israeli origin, accused of financing terrorism,” Jahangir said.<\/p>\n
At the time, the United States denounced the seizure of the ship as an act of piracy and called for its crew to be released.<\/p>\n
Israel’s foreign minister called on the European Union to designate the Revolutionary Guards a “terrorist organization” in response.<\/p>\n
At least some of the crew were later freed.<\/p>\n
Jahangir said the ship, excluding its cargo, was valued at $170 million and claimed that Ofer — an Israeli billionaire and shipping magnate — was an “influential figure” within the Israeli government.<\/p>\n
The ship’s seizure came months into the war in Gaza, where Israel was fighting Iran-backed Palestinian Hamas, whose October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel sparked the conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iran has demanded a $170 million fine from the owner of a cargo ship that it seized in last year and accused of having ties to Israel, a judicial official said Tuesday. The Revolutionary Guards, the ideological arm of Iran’s military, intercepted the MSC Aries in April of 2024 and detained its 25 international crew …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56420,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56417\/revisions\/56420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}