An Israeli-owned freighter is attacked with a missile while sailing towards the Gulf

The merchant ship 'Helios Ray', belonging to an Israeli shipping company, docked for repair on February 28 in Dubai.GIUSEPPE CACACE / AFP

A cargo ship owned by an Israeli company suffered material damage this Saturday in an attack while sailing in the direction of the Persian Gulf through the northern Indian Ocean, as confirmed to the

newspaper

Israeli defense sources, who are investigating the events as an alleged retaliatory action by Iran. The Lebanese television channel Al Mayadin was the first to report the incident. This chain close to the pro-Iranian party-militia Hezbollah assured that a missile had caused a fire that left no victims or prevented the ship from continuing its route. None of the crew members is of Israeli nationality.

Al Mayadin stressed that the attack came after the Tehran authorities denounced at the end of June the sabotage of the Atomic Agency facilities in Karaj, west of the Iranian capital, in an operation that bore the seal of the intelligence services. Israelis, to paralyze the production of uranium enrichment centrifuges.

Israel suspects that Iran may have reactivated the hidden naval war that both countries have been waging since the beginning of the year on the Middle East trade routes and that it has caused a chain of incidents in the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the eastern Mediterranean.

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Channel 12 of Israeli television identified the attacked ship with the name of

a Liberian-flagged container ship that was heading from the port of Jeddah, on the Saudi coast of the Red Sea, to that of Dubai. The

owned by the Monaco-based shipping company Zodiac Maritim Ltd. managed by Israeli magnate Eyal Ofer. Company sources, however, told Reuters that the vessel had recently ceased to be their property.

This apparent new episode of the shadow naval conflict between the two countries ties in with the April attack with adhesive mines on another Israeli-owned freighter off the coast of the United Arab Emirates.

A few days earlier, an explosion had damaged Iran's Natanz nuclear power plant, where uranium enrichment activity is concentrated.

Also in April, an Iranian ship allegedly serving as a naval command center for the Revolutionary Guardians in the Red Sea was immobilized in an attack that Tehran attributed to Israeli commandos.

One of the largest vessels in the Iranian Navy, the

tanker

it sank a month ago in the Gulf of Oman, after catching fire from unknown causes. It was one of the few ships of the Iranian Navy capable of resupplying other ships of the fleet on the high seas, had cranes to move heavy cargo and had a helipad.

The then Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in March accused Iran of the missile attack on the merchant

, registered in the Bahamas by an Israeli company, in the Gulf of Oman. It was followed weeks later by another alleged armed action in the Arabian Sea against the

Liberian-flagged

container ship

also owned by a Haifa-based company. The American newspaper The

had just revealed on that date that Israeli Navy commandos had sabotaged at least a dozen Iranian tankers and ships that were sailing with fuel and material susceptible of military use through Middle Eastern waters since 2019.