Israeli ship attacked off the coast of UAE

The ship Hyperion, owned by an Israeli company, has come under attack in positions off the coast of the United Arab Emirates. The attack took place in the Gulf of Oman near the port of Fujairah. According to sources close to the incident, no one was injured in the attack and it is suspected that the perpetrator may have been Iran, in response to the Israeli state's sabotage of the Iranian nuclear plant at Natanz.

This attack, allegedly orchestrated by Tehran, may be the revenge referred to by Foreign Ministry spokesman Said Khatibzadeh, who said that "revenge will be carried out at the right time and in the right place". The Israeli attack on Natanz was carried out just days before the meeting scheduled for Wednesday 14 April in Vienna, which has as its main objective to bring both the United States and Iran to find a meeting point that makes it possible to recover the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). 

The country led by Benjamin Netanyahu has long positioned itself against the pact, which the United States withdrew from in 2018 under the presidency of Donald Trump. Iran points out that the Israeli attack on its nuclear plant, far from weakening them in the face of the talks that will take place in the Austrian capital, what it will do is further strengthen their position. It has long been clear to Tehran that it must be the United States that takes the first step towards a return to the agreement reached in 2015 by lifting the sanctions imposed. Otherwise, the Iranians have no will to respect the measures set out in the JCPOA.

The attack on the Israeli ship Hyperion may be an Iranian response that would not even have waited for the Vienna meeting. Israel knew that a response from Iran was a possibility given the highly sensitive context in which the attack on the Natanz plant was launched, what was not so expected was that it would happen in such a short period of time. So far, however, this remains a hypothesis that, despite being the strongest one at the moment, has not been confirmed. If it were to do so, it would represent a new Iranian attack that would further strain relations with Israel at a key moment in the JCPOA negotiations.