Could Iran be blamed for ecological terrorism against Israel?

The ability of a ship to purposely dump oil so that, two weeks later, it harms a country’s coastline appears very complex. The story of the ship – like many things at sea that involve the shipping industry look diabolic. This is because ownership of ships is often murky and involves shell companies and ships registered in one place, flying the flag of a different place, owned by a third party and captained by people from a fourth nation.

A shocking claim by Israel’s environmental protection minister, Gila Gamliel on Wednesday that a Libyan ship dumped containers of crude oil off Israel’s coast, causing one of the country’s worst environmental disasters, is making waves. This is because Gamliel accused that Iran was responsible for the environmental harm.

“This is a crude oil tanker called Emerald, owned and operated by a Libyan company,” Gamliel said. “It was illegally carrying cargo from Iran to Syria. The ship was flying Panama’s flag. Iran is waging terrorism not only by trying to arm itself with nuclear weapons or trying to establish a base near our borders. Iran is waging terrorism by harming the environment.

The ship was allegedly going from Iran to Syria where it was smuggling crude oil, Israel claims. Ships trying to get to Syria from Iran in the past have been interdicted so the transit can be illicit. The vessel also turned off its automatic identification system, a kind of transponder.

Can a ship purposely dump containers of crude oil to harm Israel’s environment? It is not out of the realm of possibility. In the past, Israel has had friction with Syria over water issues, including fishing, and the Jordan River was a cause for conflict in the early years of the state. Disputes over a dam in Ethiopia have led to a war of words in northeast Africa.

However, the ability of a ship to purposely dump oil so that, two weeks later, it harms a country’s coastline appears very complex. That would require study of the currents off the coast and knowledge of where cargo needs to be dumped and at what time to end up in a certain place.

It leads to further questions about why such activity wasn’t judged to be suspicious when it was happening, rather than almost a month later.

The chance that Iran would risk damaging the coastline of Gaza or its Hezbollah friends in Lebanon – they all share a coastline with Israel – would appear to be a major risk for Tehran.