The UK Maritime Trade Operations confirmed that a merchant vessel, identified in media reports as the Bahamian-flagged, Israeli-owned Helios Ray, had “experienced an explosion” in the Gulf of Oman. Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz subsequently indicated that “the location of the ship in relative close proximity to Iran raises the notion, the assessment, that it is the Iranians”. Too, Israel’s military chief of staff maintained: “we got a reminder that Iran not only is a nuclear threat, but that it spreads and carries out terror and operations against civilian targets… the IDF acts and will act against the threats that endanger [Israel], near and far”.