The Israeli environmental protection minister claims that the oil spill in the Meditteranean was an intended attack by Iran, but she has no proof of this. She even went so far as to call the event ‘terrorism’ as it was supposedly intended to harm Israel’s ocean ecosystem. More than 1,000 tons of tar have washed up on Israel’s coast. Some environmentalists are calling this incident one of the worst of Israel’s natural disasters. The environmental protection industry has identified the boat they believe is responsible for the spill, a tanker named Emerald, originally Libyan owned, who was flying under the Panama flag. The ship made some irregular movements and actions, such as turning off transmission and irregular sailing patterns, which leads officials to believe that it was involved in smuggling oil from Iran, which violates international sanctions. Officials are led to believe from this information that Iran did indeed have a hand in this event, but whether it was intentional on their part is still unconfirmed. Israel has in the past denounced Iran for its nuclear weapons development as well as their involvement with militant groups.
This interaction could be very important as one leading up to existing tensions between Iran and Israel boiling over into violent conflict. If Iran is proved to be the culprit for this incident, other countries, particularly those in the UN, will be compelled to take action against Iran whether to punish their actions for this spill and prevent them from having powers in the future. Either way, the resulting effects of this event if Iran is proved to have dumped the oil intentionally could completely remold foriegn relations between Iran and countries within the UN, perhaps even countries that merely just take a strong stand against climate change. This behavior, if it was Iran, is very provocatory in my opinion, especially considering the current situation of our planet, spilling oil in this manner is harmful to the world, even if it will have a small term negative impact on your enemies, this attack will surely create many more in defense of Israel and the environment.