TEHRAN/ISLAMABAD, JUN 26: Tehran said Friday that 22 Iranian crew members whose oil tanker was seized by the United States during the recent conflict had been transferred to Iran’s consulate in Pakistan.
Iran’s eastern neighbor and mediator in talks with the US, Pakistan, facilitated the return of “the 22 Iranian seafarers whose oil tanker had been seized by the United States,” the state news agency IRNA reported.
The crew were handed over to Iranian diplomats in Karachi and are expected to return to Iran in the coming days, according to the agency.
Neither IRNA nor Iranian authorities identified the tanker or disclosed where or when it was seized.
The Iranian consulate general in Karachi also announced the crew’s arrival, saying the 22 sailors “will return to their homeland in the coming days.”
The development came months after the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran on February 28, killing former supreme leader Ali Khamenei along with several senior military commanders.
Iran responded with missile and drone attacks on countries in the region and closed the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s crude oil and liquefied natural gas shipments normally transit.
US forces subsequently imposed a blockade on vessels bound for or departing from Iranian ports and seized a number of ships linked to Iran and struck others with missiles.
The sides reached an agreement in mid-June to end months of hostilities and begin gradually lifting their respective maritime blockades.
