Pirating. It’s back to pirating for Iran.

With the world on edge ahead of an expected IRGC counterattack to avenge the death of Mohamad Reza Zahedi and half a dozen pals killed in a brazen Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus, Khamenei’s Guards boarded a container ship near the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday.

The Portuguese-flagged MSC Aries apparently belongs to Eyal Ofer, the Israel-born, Monaco-based shipping tycoon net worth $22.8 billion as of Friday, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, where he ranks 83rd between Anheuser-Busch InBev partner Jorge Paulo Lemann and Radhakishan Damani, the “Retail King of India.”

Things were going fine for the MSC Aries as of Friday evening, but at some point Saturday, a Soviet-era helicopter showed up. That’s never good. IRNA posted a video on social media, and Tasnim later confirmed that the ship was commandeered by Iran’s “navy forces” right around lunchtime.

AP dramatized the incident in a short article. IRGC “commandos rappelled down from a helicopter… and seized the vessel,” which was then “guided towards the territorial waters of our country,” as Iranian state media later put it.

This isn’t the first time boats belonging to, or affiliated with, Ofer’s Zodiac group ended up in Iran’s crosshairs. “The Israeli billionaire Ofer family have lessons to learn,” Haaretz wrote, in 2021, following a string of attacks on ships linked to Israel. The title of that Haaretz article: “Israeli Ofer Family Ships Frequented Iranian Ports. Now Iran’s Attacking Them.”

A little over a year ago, a projectile (an “airborne object”) hit an oil tanker in the Persian Gulf with links to Zodiac Maritime. Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Iran. In 2021, two people were killed when an Iranian-made drone targeted the MT Mercer Street, which was managed by Zodiac. And so on.

I’m not sure what the plan is this time around, but as noted here on Friday, Tehran’s options for targeting Israel directly in retaliation for the IDF strike on the consulate in Syria are very limited. Firing missiles into Israel is something Hezbollah does on Iran’s behalf. If the IRGC were to do it directly, it’d be… I don’t know. Bad if anyone were killed.

I doubt Saturday’s “maritime operation” was the counterattack the world’s waiting for. If it was, it’s underwhelming, with all due concern for the crew, whose lives are now in peril. (Don’t worry. Iran won’t kill them.) More likely, the sea drama was an opportunistic endeavor.

Either way, Israel Katz wasn’t amused. “The IRGC have seized a Portuguese civilian cargo ship, belonging to an EU member, claiming Israeli ownership,” he said, calling the incident “a pirate operation” and demanding the EU “immediately” designate the Guards as a terrorist organization “and sanction Iran now.”