Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said troops “confiscated” the Stena Impero tanker in the strait of Hormuz for allegedly violating international laws. The vessel “was led to the shore and handed over to (authorities) to go through the legal procedure and required investigations”, IRGC’s official website said.

18 of the 23 crew members are Indians and the Indian government is seeking their release

Iran’s semi-official Fars new agency reported the tanker was seized on Friday after it collided with an Iranian fishing boat whose distress call it ignored. The vessel and crew will remain in Bandar Abbas port while the incident is investigated, the head of the Ports and Maritime Organisation in Hormozgan province, Al Lahmorad Afifipour, was quoted as saying by Fars.

two Iranian vessels set to carry Brazilian corn are stranded off the Latin American nation’s coast because they can’t get fuel, according to the port authority at Paranagua, about 450 kilometers (280 miles) south of Sao Paulo.

Brazil's State-controlled oil company Petroleo Brasileiro said it won’t supply the ships — — which have been floating for over a month — due to the risk of U.S. sanctions.

Brazil's attorney general’s office said Petrobras is not obligated to fuel the ships as the company responsible for them is able to buy fuel from others suppliers.

In addition, the attorney general said the diplomatic issue involving the matter should prevail over private interests.

Israel's U.S.-backed Arrow-3 ballistic missile shield has passed a series of live interception tests over Alaska, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, casting the achievement as a warning to Iran.

Jointly manufactured by U.S. firm Boeing Co, Arrow-3 is billed as capable of shooting down incoming missiles in space, an altitude that would destroy any non-conventional warheads safely. It passed its first full interception test over the Mediterranean Sea in 2015 and was deployed in Israel in 2017.

"The performance was perfect - every hit a bull's eye," Netanyahu, who doubles as defence minister, said in a statement announcing the three secret tests.

Hard facts are elusive, but most analysts agree that Iran’s direct military presence is indeed fairly modest. It is led by the elite Quds force of the Islamic revolutionary guards corps (IRGC) and thought to number in the hundreds. Still, dozens of its men, including at least seven senior officers, have been killed in Syria since 2012. Iran also works with Hezbollah, its close Lebanese Shia ally, and with units of Shia fighters from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. General Qassem Suleimani, the famous Quds force commander, visited the Idlib area in June amid talks of a counter-offensive against advancing anti-Assad rebels.

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Outside the Damascus embassy the Iranians keep a lower profile than the Russians, who have a naval base near Latakia and a more visible role boosted by the arrival of new equipment and personnel. IRGC advisers, who are occasionally spotted near the frontlines, shun publicity. Fit-looking Iranians in civilian clothes are sometimes seen crossing the Lebanese border, handing over their passports en masse without being required to leave their vehicles – a sure sign of their discreet VIP status.

“The Iranians are there – and they are not there,” quips a Sunni businessman from Homs. “They are a ghostly presence.” Speculation about their activities is rife. But the consensus among many Syrians and foreign experts is that their role is extremely important – though very shadowy.

“We know quite a lot about what the Iranians do in specific places – we see weapons, equipment and intercepts – but we still don’t have an understanding of what they do in institutional terms,” says Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). “The question is to what extent they are involved in planning and command and control.”

on Friday, US Justice Department filed a last-minute request to detain the ship, alleging it..was involved in supporting illicit shipments to Syria by Iran's IRGC listed as a terror group by Washington.
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Gibraltar's government rejected that request, saying it could not seek a court order because US sanctions were not applicable in EU

It's all about the saffron.
Yes, the spice!

Iran is renowned, to produce some of
the lowest quality saffron in the world.

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The Muslim world has a natural cycle of leadership rising and falling (Egypt, Persia as was, Turkey, etc). If it wasn't for America and Europe propping up the Saudi's (news flash: Saudi Arabia is collapsing) Iran would be the leader of the Islamic world again and we would all be better off and safer for it.

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It's all about the saffron.
Yes, the spice!

Iran is renowned, to produce some of
the lowest quality saffron in the world.