Iran Guard sieze container vessel near Strait of Hormoz

Iran Revolutionary guard siezes a vessel near the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday.

Commandos from Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard rappelled from a helicopter onto an Israeli-affiliated container ship near the Strait of Hormuz and seized the vessel Saturday, the latest in a series of attacks between the two countries. 

The Middle East had braced for potential Iranian retaliation over a suspected Israeli strike earlier this month on an Iranian consular building in Syria that killed 12 people, including a senior Guard general who once commanded its expeditionary Quds Force there. 

The Israeli war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip meanwhile is now six months old and is inflaming decades-old tensions across the whole region. With Iranian-backed forces such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Yemen's Houthi rebels also involved in the fighting, any new attack in the Mideast threatens to escalate that conflict into a wider regional war. 

Iran's state-run IRNA said a special forces unit of the Guard's navy carried out the attack on the vessel, the Portuguese-flagged MSC Aries, a cargo ship associated with London-based Zodiac Maritime. 

https://www.voanews.com/a/iran-s-revolutionary-guard-seizes-cargo-ship-near-strait-of-hormuz/7568685.html