The US made good on its threat to board and seize any vessel defying its blockade of Iran’s ports on Sunday, with footage released by the military showing a guided-missile destroyer firing on the Iran-linked M/V Touska, and once it was disabled, Marines rappelling from helicopters onto its deck.
The incident comes after the Trump administration said it expected peace talks with Iran to resume this week in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Iran has vowed to retaliate for the seizure of the merchant ship, and it has not yet officially committed to the talks.
What happens now to the ship and its crew may depend on what it was carrying, experts told CNN.
Here’s what we know.
What is M/V Touska?
US Central Command (CENTCOM) says the guided-missile destroyer USS Spruance warned the Touska repeatedly over a six-hour period, during which time the container ship was steaming in the Arabian Sea toward Bandar Abbas, Iran.
According to MarineTraffic.com, the Touska’s last port of call was Port Klang, Malaysia, on April 12. Before that it had been going back and forth between the Chinese city of Zhuhai and various Iranian ports.
The ship is owned by the Mosakhar Darya Shipping Co, which has an address in Tehran and is subject to sanctions, according to the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Marine Traffic says the Touska has been under sanctions since 2018, and that all its owner companies, technical and commercial managers have been sanctioned since 2012.
What US forces were involved?
The USS Spruance is an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, the workhorse of naval fleet.
It’s 5-inch gun is designed for use against ships, aircraft and land targets, according to a Navy fact sheet.
First deployed in 1971, the Mark 45 gun has a range of 15 miles with conventional ammunition.
It’s a fully automatic weapon and can fire 16 to 20 rounds per minute from a 20-round drum, which then can be reloaded by crew below deck for further use, the Navy says.
The ship carries a range of other weaponry, including torpedoes, Tomahawk missiles for land attacks, Standard interceptors for ballistic missile defense and Sea Sparrow missiles for short-range missile and aircraft defense.
The Spruance, with a displacement of around 9,000 tons, is more than 500 feet long and carries a crew of 329. It joined the fleet in 2011, operates as part of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, and is homeported in San Diego.
How was the M/V Touska stopped?
CENTCOM says the US destroyer hit the Touska with “several rounds” from its 5-inch gun.
Video provided by the Navy shows the warship firing three shots at Touska after warning its crew to evacuate the ship’s engine room.
“US Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit later boarded the non-compliant vessel, which remains in US custody,” a CENTCOM statement said.
A video taken after sunset shows US Marines from the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli rappelling from helicopters to board the ship.
Analyst Carl Schuster, a former US Navy captain, told CNN it would probably take at least two hits from the destroyer’s gun to knock out the Touska’s diesel engine. All three fired by the Spruance in the CENTCOM-supplied video appeared to have hit, he said.
Schuster said it’s likely the vessel would need to be towed after the hits.
What happens next?
The Touska will be taken to an anchorage or port for inspection or valuation, Schuster said.
Once that is done and its cargo can be determined it could eventually become property of the US government as a “prize.” experts say.
“Under the laws of naval warfare, you can seize a vessel in these circumstances (that) has tried to run a blockade,” Jennifer Parker, a nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute and a former Royal Australian Navy officer, told CNN.
“If they choose to keep it for the long term, it would need to go through a prize court, which would need to be established,” she said.
“It can be treated as a ‘spoils of war,’” Schuster said, like any enemy combatant or materials seized from an enemy in the course of armed conflict.
As for the fate of the Touska’s crew, that would depend on their nationalities, Parker said.
“If it was Indian or Filipino sailors, I would suspect the crew would just be taken off the vessel and repatriated.”
If the crew are Iranian, they may be detained, or possibly if members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were aboard, they could be held as prisoners of war, Parker said.
If the Touska was carrying any weapons or armaments for Iran, the crew would likely be detained, she said.
CNN has reached out to Central Command for comment on the nationality of the crew and the status of the cargo ship.
