Empire Navigation, the company that manages the oil tanker Iran seized Thursday in the Gulf of Oman as part of a years-long dispute with the United States, still “has not been able to establish direct contact with the crew,” it said in a statement shared with The Daily Beast. Four or five armed and masked men boarded the vessel, the St. Nicholas, and rerouted it to Iranian territorial waters Thursday, according to the U.K. Marine Trade Operations. The armed men appear to have since disabled the satellite communication system on the vessel, according to Empire Navigation. The last known location of the tanker was in the port of Banda Abbas in Iran, according to the company.
