Tehran denies involvement in drone attack
Observer Report London
Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy economies said Iran was threatening international peace and security and that all available evidence showed it was behind an attack on the Mercer Street tanker last week.
“All available evidence clearly points to Iran. There is no justification for this attack,” said the statement, issued by current G7 chair, Britain.
The vessel was a Liberian-flagged, Japanese-owned petroleum product tanker managed by Israeli-owned Zodiac Maritime. Tehran has denied any involvement in the suspected drone attack in which two crew members – a Briton and a Romanian – were killed.
Read: Iran warns of response if security threatened after attack on Israeli-managed tanker. In a separate statement, the US military said explo-sives experts from the Ronald Reagan aircraft car-rier – which deployed to assist the Mercer Street – concluded the drone was produced in Iran.
It said the explosives experts were able to recover several pieces of a drone, including a part of the wing and internal components which it said were nearly identical to previously-collected samples of Iranian attack drones.
The US military also suggested the attack may have been launched from the Iranian coast, saying the distance to the locations of the attacks “was within the range of documented Iranian one-way attack” drones.
“Some of the material was transferred to US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain and subse-quently to a US national laboratory for further test-ing and verification,” Central Command, which oversees US forces in the region, said in the state-ment.
Despite Tehran’s denials, Britain, the United States and others have criticised Iran for the attack.
“Iran’s behaviour, alongside its support to proxy forces and non-state armed actors, threatens interna-tional peace and security,” the G7 statement said.
“We call on Iran to stop all activities inconsistent with relevant UN Security Council resolutions, and call on all parties to play a constructive role in fostering regional stability and peace.”
