U.A.E., Saudis, Norway Find No Evidence against Iran in Tanker Attacks, nor Does United Nations

June 27, 2019 (EIRNS)—Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates, said yesterday that thereis no evidence proving Iranian complicity in the tanker attacks in the emirate of Fujairah in May. Bin Zayed was in Moscow for meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other Russian officials and spoke in a joint press conference with Lavrov.

“The U.A.E. is not pointing fingers of accusation at any state for the recent attacks on four oil tankers in the country’s territorial waters, since clear, scientific and convincing evidence is required to do that. Should any other country have clearer evidence, the international community would certainly take it into consideration,”

he said, according to the statement posted on the U.A.E. Foreign Ministry website.

He continued, of the “three states concerned with the issue,” the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, and Norway,

“We will continue our commitment to professionalism on this issue. We have already presented the findings of our first probe to the Security Council. ... We defined the attacks as aggressions that were most probably carried out by actors with a considerable amount of intelligence and technical expertise.”

The UN Security Council had also refused to attribute blame to Iran for the tanker attacks in the Gulf of Oman, when it met on Monday night, June 24, and exhorted for “maximum restraint” by all parties acting in the area.

For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry has determined that the U.S. drone shot down by Iran last week had entered Iranian airspace, as Tehran claimed, and was not in international airspace when it was downed, as the U.S. claims, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev reported on June 25. “We have not seen any proof otherwise,” he said.