IRAN seized a South Korea-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf today as tensions rose between it and the United States around the first anniversary of the US killing of Iranian General Qassim Soleimani.

It said the seizure was linked to “pollution,” but analysts said it would raise pressure on South Korea in negotiations over frozen Iranian assets.

Thousands had rallied in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square on Sunday, calling for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq a year on from Gen Soleimani’s assassination.

Banners read: “You killed our guest. There is no place here for your embassy” while crowds chanted “No, no to America!”

With president-elect Joe Biden due to take office on January 20, fears are rising that the US administration of Donald Trump could try to create chaos with an attack on Iran in its last days. 

The US has sent a nuclear submarine to the Persian Gulf and ordered B-52 bomber flyovers in the region, saying it has reason to suspect an imminent Iranian attack on its interests.

And the communist Tudeh Party of Iran warned of a “dangerous escalation” in tensions between the US and Iranian governments.

Gen Soleimani’s successor as head of Iran’s special ops Quds Force, Brigadier-General Esmail Qaani, reportedly told the Iranian parliament that US officials involved in his murder “should learn about Salman Rushdie’s life in hiding, as the Islamic Republic will avenge the unjustly shed blood of Martyr Soleimani.”

Mr Rushdie was forced to live under police protection for several years from 1988 after Iran placed a bounty on his head for writing The Satanic Verses, which then Iranian leader ayatollah Khomeini denounced as blasphemous.

US State Department spokesman Cale Brown said that the remarks amounted to a terrorist threat against the US president and secretaries of defence and state.

“The racist Trump administration has done its utmost over the past four years to undermine all international efforts … to resolve the disputes between Iran and the United States,” the Tudeh Party said.

“Every effort must be made so that the reactionaries and those unwise leaders in both the White House and the theocratic regime in our troubled homeland not to flare up a catastrophic eruption, the consequences of which will exacerbate the suffering of the Iranian people and blow up the region.”