14AUG

UAE names IRGC over two ADNOC ships

3 min read

09:56UTC

Abu Dhabi called an attack on two state-owned tankers an act of piracy by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, five days after leaving an almost identical incident unattributed.

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Key takeaway

The UAE named the IRGC directly for the first time and called the attack piracy.

Two vessels belonging to ADNOC (Abu Dhabi National Oil Company), the Emirati state producer, came under attack while crossing the strait of Hormuz on the night of Thursday 13 August. Nobody was hurt. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) foreign ministry, in a statement carried by the state news agency WAM, called it "an act of piracy by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps" and a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2817 on freedom of navigation ¹. Bahrain condemned the attack separately. Tehran has claimed nothing.

Five days earlier Abu Dhabi said an Iranian missile had targeted a single ADNOC ship and stopped there, leaving the attacker unnamed and the vessel unidentified . Thursday's statement names the force, cites a Security Council instrument and reaches for a word with specific legal weight. Piracy under the law of the sea means violence committed for private ends, and a state's armed force does not meet that test, which is why the choice reads as political rather than legal.

What the word does buy Abu Dhabi is a category every shipowner and underwriter already prices. A firm chartering a tanker this week reads a Gulf government saying the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) is firing on that government's own ships inside the waterway, and the most exposed hull is the one carrying no Iranian tie to trade on. That reading sits underneath the week's transit collapse rather than beside it.

Abu Dhabi's account remains the only one on the record. No independent confirmation of the attack exists, no vessel names have been released, and the UAE has not said what damage the two ships took.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

ADNOC is the United Arab Emirates' state oil company. Two of its ships were attacked in the Strait of Hormuz on 13 August, the second such attack in under a week. This time the UAE government directly blamed Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an elite military and security force separate from Iran's regular army, and called the attack an act of piracy, backing that up by citing a UN Security Council resolution on freedom of navigation. In the earlier attack, five days before, the UAE had blamed only "an Iranian missile" without naming who fired it. That shift, from a vague description to a direct, formal accusation, is itself a signal: the UAE is running out of quieter options.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The UAE's diplomatic adviser Anwar Gargash warned days earlier that the region is trapped "between neither war nor peace" , a complaint from a government that has already spent its influence: it helped talk Trump out of an August strike, yet cannot direct what leaves an Iranian launcher or deter attacks on its own fleet.

Naming the IRGC and citing Resolution 2817 is one of the few tools left once quiet diplomacy has been exhausted and the attacks keep coming regardless.

What could happen next?

Consequence
A formal piracy characterisation backed by a named UN resolution gives the UAE a stronger basis to seek international insurance, legal or Security Council action than the vaguer 8 August statement did.
Risk
Two attacks on ADNOC shipping within a week, with no Iranian acceptance of responsibility, raises the chance of a third incident before any diplomatic or legal response can take effect.

Source Landscape

This story draws on centre-right-leaning sources from United Arab Emirates

United Arab Emirates

Primary parallel: The escalation from an unattributed strike to formal state attribution echoes the UK and Iran's dispute over the July 2019 seizure of the tanker Stena Impero, where weeks of informal blame preceded formal government statements, and diplomatic and insurance consequences followed the attribution rather than the seizure itself.

Counter-parallel: The Stena Impero standoff ended within months via a prisoner and vessel exchange brokered quietly between London and Tehran. No comparable exchange channel exists here: the UAE has spent political capital lobbying Washington to stand down strikes (ID:5537) while its own shipping keeps being hit, leaving Abu Dhabi with attribution but no negotiating lever of its own.

Consensus view: The UAE Foreign Ministry, via state agency WAM, called the 13 August strike on two ADNOC vessels "an act of piracy by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps" and cited UN Security Council Resolution 2817 on freedom of navigation, a sharper formal attribution than the 8 August incident received, when the UAE named only "an Iranian missile" without naming the IRGC or invoking any resolution .

Counter-view: Iran had not accepted responsibility for the 13 August attack as of publication, and no Iranian official statement addressing the UAE's IRGC attribution or the piracy characterisation was found in the available reporting.

Key tension: Whether naming the IRGC directly and invoking a UN resolution signals the UAE building a formal legal case it intends to pursue, or is simply firmer language for a second attack inside a week that Abu Dhabi has no other means to deter.

Sources:The National

Mentions:ADNOC →Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) →Bahrain →WAM →Washington →Strait of Hormuz →Iran →Tehran →Emirates →Abu Dhabi →London →Resolution 2817 →United Arab Emirates (UAE) →

First Reported In

Update #170 · The ships Iran does not control are leaving Hormuz

The National· 14 Aug 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

UAE says an Iranian missile hit its vessel

The 13 August attack follows the 8 August incident the UAE first reported against an ADNOC vessel.

Occurred 7 Aug 2026

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This Event

UAE names IRGC over two ADNOC ships

The first direct Emirati attribution of an attack on its shipping to a named Iranian force, and the first to reach for a word insurers already know how to price.

Different Perspectives

Zawtar municipality, Lebanon

Mayor Muhammad Ismail called the 12 August demolition of the Sheikh Naim Mahdi School the biggest blow of a month that has also taken a nursery, municipal buildings, and his own home. The school falls inside Lebanon's nominal ceasefire zone.

European Union

The EU's High Representative joined 31 other states on 13 August condemning Iran's use of the death penalty to silence dissent. The joint statement cites no single casualty figure, leaving the scale of what it condemns to three monitors that disagree with each other.

Hengaw

The Norway-based monitor recorded 67 Iranian executions in July alone, against the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center's full-year total of 916 and Iran Human Rights Monitor's roughly 463. None of the three reconciles its count with the other two.

Lloyd's List Intelligence and Kpler

Lloyd's List counted 78 weekly Hormuz transits to 9 August, down from 95, with non-Iranian-linked ships leaving fastest. Kpler-sourced reports for 11 August traffic diverge between outlets by more than double, leaving underwriters no single figure for the route.

United States Treasury

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Newsmax on 13 August that Washington will announce measures with more detail the following week. He named no instrument, sanctions target, or effective date.

United Arab Emirates

The UAE foreign ministry named the IRGC as the perpetrator of the 13 August attack on two ADNOC vessels, called it piracy, and invoked UN Security Council Resolution 2817. The statement follows five months in which every UAE shipping claim rested on Abu Dhabi's word alone.