TEL AVIV: Israel today said that Iran intentionally polluted the Mediterranean Sea and Israel’s shores in an act of ecological terrorism, causing the greatest environmental disasters in Israel’s history.

Blaming Tehran for an oil spill on February 1-2 off the Israeli Mediterranean coast, Israeli Environment Minister Gila Gamliel blamed Iran for contaminating about 160 kilometers of its beaches with oil products. "This is not just an environmental crime, but environmental terrorism," she said.

The oil spill has blackened beaches across Israel’s coast and several tons of sticky tar floated onto Israel's shores causing massive damage to local wildlife and threaten to contaminate the local groundwater. Environmental experts have called it an ecological disaster that could take years to clean up.

Gamliel said that following a two-week investigation, the Environmental Protection Ministry found that the ship called the Emerald which carries a Panamanian flag, that leaked the crude oil, was owned by a Libyan company and sailed from Iran to Syria. 

According to Gamliel, the ship departed Iran, turning off its automatic identification system (AIS) – which transmits its location to other ships in the area. The ship remained within tens of kilometers of Israel’s shores, within Israel’s economic waters, for nearly a full day, spilling large amounts of oil on February 1-2, with its AIS off.

It turned the AIS on as it went through the Suez Canal, and then off again as it approached Israel’s shores, she added.

Although there was no immediate comment from Iran, international affairs experts say that the latest accusation could further increase tensions between Israel and Iran. Earlier this week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had blamed Iran for an explosion aboard an Israeli-owned ship in the Gulf of Oman last week, an accusation rejected by Tehran.