A Turkish-owned ship was able to cross the Strait of Hormuz with Iran’s permission, Turkey’s transport minister said Friday.
The Strait of Hormuz is a critical shipping route that Iran has closed since Israel and the United States attacked it on February 28.
“We have 15 Turkish-owned ships in the Strait of Hormuz and were able to get one of them through after obtaining permission from the Iranian authorities,” Abdulkadir Uraloglu told journalists late Thursday, in comments only published on Friday.
He spoke just hours before a ballistic missile fired from Iran was intercepted in Turkish airspace by NATO defence systems, the third such incident in just over a week.
Uraloglu did not say when the ship crossed the Strait, a crucial sea route for the global fuel trade, which has been virtually blocked by Iran in order to inflict pain on the global economy.
“We are trying to stay in contact with the Iranian side,” he said.
“Fourteen of our ships are waiting, they currently have no problems,” he added, noting that there were “no Turkish-flagged ships” in the region.
Iran has repeatedly struck Gulf states in retaliation for the US-Israeli attacks that began on February 28, killing Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
It has also fired on commercial ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
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