Tue Jul 30, 2019 04:26PM [Updated: Tue Jul 30, 2019 04:52PM ]
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Commander of Iran’s Border Police Brigadier General Qassem Rezaei (R) meets with visiting Commander of the Emirati Coastguard Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Mesbah al-Ahbabi in Tehran, July 30, 2019. (Photo by IRNA)
Commander of Iran’s Border Police Brigadier General Qassem Rezaei (R) meets with visiting Commander of the Emirati Coastguard Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Mesbah al-Ahbabi in Tehran, July 30, 2019. (Photo by IRNA)
Iranian and Emirati coastguard officials have held a joint meeting on maritime security cooperation in Tehran, the first such talks since 2003 which come amid heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf region.
Earlier in the day, IRNA cited a Foreign Ministry statement as saying that the sixth joint coastguard meeting between Iran and a visiting seven-member delegation from the UAE would be focused on bilateral border cooperation in the area of maritime border security.
The report added that the meeting would also feature consultations on such issues as Emirati and Iranian nationals’ maritime travel between the countries and trespassing or inadvertent border breaches, as well as facilitating and expediting mutual information exchange between Iranian and UAE maritime security authorities.
The two sides held their last such gathering in Tehran in October 2013.
The latest meeting comes following a chain of naval accidents in the region’s waters.
In May, explosions hit four commercial vessels from the UAE and Saudi Arabia off the Emirates’ port of Fujairah in the Persian Gulf.
A month later, two blasts hit a Japanese and a Norwegian-owned vessel in the Sea of Oman. Iranian naval forces gave a quick response to the distress calls from those ships and rushed to rescue their crew members.
PressTV-Evidence 'not enough' to lay blame for Fujairah attack: UAE
PressTV-Evidence 'not enough' to lay blame for Fujairah attack: UAE
Emirati minister of foreign affairs says Abu Dhabi lacks sufficient evidence to blame any country for last month's attacks on four vessels in Fujairah.
The United States soon tried to implicate Iran in the incidents to suggest that the Islamic Republic was trying to retaliate for Washington and its allies’ efforts to trouble the Islamic Republic’s international oil sales.
On June 15, however, Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan said his country did not have enough evidence to blame any country for previous month's naval attacks.
Japan and Germany also refuted Washington’s accusations against Iran in the second incident.
Iran has roundly rejected Washington’s claims of Tehran’s involvement in such incident. It has also voiced concern about adventurism by foreign players to disrupt maritime navigation in the Persian Gulf region.
Tehran has also asserted that, one way or another, it would sell its oil despite the illegal and unilateral US sanctions against Iran, but has categorically rejected recourse to violence to make that happen.
