Seized 7 Kuwaiti Boats, Iran Says

Iran said Sunday that it seized seven Kuwaiti speedboats in a narrow channel at the northern tip of the Persian Gulf and that all the seamen aboard confessed to spying for Iraq.

Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency, monitored in Nicosia, said the boats were seized “recently” in Khur Abdullah, a narrow channel that forms a border between Kuwait and Iraq’s southern Faw Peninsula. The peninsula was captured by the Iranians in February, 1986.

IRNA did not say if all seven boats were captured at the same time, nor did it disclose the number of seamen seized. It said the captured crews admitted “they were gathering information for the Iraqi regime under the cover of fishing.”

It called the incident a “new treachery by Kuwait and an open indication of its growing support for the Iraqi regime, even to the extent of spying for them.”

There was no immediate comment on the report from Kuwait. The oil-rich gulf nation borders Iraq, which has been locked in a bitter war against Iran since September, 1980. Iran has repeatedly accused Kuwait of aiding Iraq’s war effort.