ATHENS — Compared with the Persian Gulf right now, the Black Sea war zone could almost be called placid. After Iran warned that it could follow Friday’s seizure of two Greek tankers with more such actions, Greece’s shipping ministry on Monday advised the country’s ships to avoid Iranian territorial waters when crossing the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman. 

Iran’s move was widely seen as a retaliatory act for what transpired in Greek waters in April. That is when, as the Financial Times put it, “Athens seized the Russia-flagged Pegas oil tanker — subsequently renamed Lana — for carrying sanctioned Iranian crude,” adding that U.S. authorities “are reported to have last week taken the Iranian crude from the tanker.”

Wherever that oil may be right now, at present the drama at sea is ongoing. 

The Greek shipping ministry said that one of the ships, the Prudent Warrior, is now anchored in the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, while as of Monday the second one, the Delta Poseidon, remained at the same location in the Persian Gulf where it was captured on Friday. Both Greek tankers are now occupied by members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

According to Kathimerini, the Delta Poseidon has a crew of 25, including two Greeks, and the Prudent Warrior has a crew of 23, including eight Greeks and a Cypriot, and that the crews were reportedly in good health. 

Athens denounced Friday’s Iranian belligerence at sea as an act of piracy. There were murmurs in the Greek capital that the crews could be released by Monday, but that has appeared to not be the case. Friday’s action in the Persian Gulf was dramatic, with Greece’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stating that “armed men took the crew captive” on at least one of the ships; presumably armed Iranian forces also descended on the second ship. According to various reports the Revolutionary Guards used a helicopter to facilitate their hijacking of the vessels. 

Prior to the incident, according to an American defense official, the two vessels had come close to Iranian territorial waters. That official also said the ships had turned off their tracking devices.

The Financial Times noted that Greece is a shipping powerhouse with almost a quarter of all oil supertankers sailing under its flag. The developments, which are yet another repercussion of Russia’s war on Ukraine, are already causing alarm in Greece’s vital commercial maritime sector. “After the seizure of the two Greek flagged tankers, we are reassessing the safety of the Arabian Gulf,” the chief executive of Signal Maritime, a commercial ship management company based in Athens, Panos Dimitrakopoulos, told the FT. 

Greece’s minister of foreign affairs, Nikos Dendias, and the ministry’s secretary general on Friday issued “a strong-worded demarche to the Iranian Ambassador in Athens to protest the violent seizure of two Greek-flagged ships in the Gulf,” a foreign ministry statement said. 

The Greek press has been following developments closely; the absence of a reported breakthrough points to negotiations taking place behind the scenes. With tensions already brewing with Turkey over myriad maritime quarrels in the Mediterranean Sea, any heat with Tehran is something Athens will want to turn down as quickly and quietly as possible.