Report on state TV says ship was smuggling oil but does not say which country crew are from. Fears for maritime security in the strait of Hormuz, a vital route for oil shipping, have grown after Iran announced it had impounded a foreign tanker it said was smuggling fuel in the Gulf. State television quoting Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the vessel was intercepted south of Iran’s Larak Island on Sunday after issuing a distress call. “A foreign vessel smuggling 1m litres of fuel in the Larak Island of the Persian Gulf has been seized,” the station said. “The vessel that Iran towed to its waters after receiving a distress call was later seized with the order from the court as we found out that it was smuggling fuel.” The Iranians did not initially identify the ship or its owners, but semi-official news agencies suggested the ship was the Panamanian-flagged MT Riah, a ship that went missing on 14 July and appeared to have been taken into Iranian waters in the strait of Hormuz. Nothing has been heard of the ship since it stopped transmitting its location in the early hours of Sunday. Iran did confirm on Tuesday, without naming Riah, that it had helped tow an unidentified ship in distress, but gave no further details. The Revolutionary Guards said in the latest statement that the vessel had been impounded “with an order from the court as we found out that it was smuggling fuel” to foreign ships. The ship is capable of carrying 2m litres and had 12 crew on board. It said it had not impounded any other ship. It is possible that the seizure of the ship is nothing more than a routine piece of Iranian maritime intelligence work, but in the current heightened tensions, western diplomats will fear it is Iranian diplomatic pressure. The UK Foreign Office said it was seeking further information on the ship and insisted that freedom of navigation was paramount. The Iranian seizure could be seen as a tit-for-tat reaction to the seizure of the Iranian-owned and Indian-crewed Grace 1 tanker a fortnight ago by Royal Marines off Gibraltar. The British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is holding talks on Thursday with Gibraltar’s first minister, Fabian Picardo, to discuss what to do about the ship. In telephone talks at the weekend with the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, Hunt offered to release the ship if there was an undertaking that the ship’s oil would not be taken to Syria, a country that is subject to EU sanctions. The Iranians have said the ship was not bound for Syria, but has refused to name its planned destination.AFP