Abolfazl Shekarchi, spokesman for the Iranian armed forces, on Saturday accused Israel, Britain and the United States of "escalating Iranophobia” and “psychological warfare” with accusations over an Iranian role in the July 29 attack in the Gulf of Oman on the Liberian-flagged tanker Mercer Street. 

In an interview with state broadcaster (IRIB) Saturday, Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Aerospace commander, said Iran would make a "harsh response" to any aggression. He stressed that Iran had "both the power and the determination to use the power" in response. 

Majid Takht-Ravanchi, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, wrote Friday that Israel and others had failed in attempts to convince the UN security council to censure Iran by presenting false information implicating Tehran in the incident, in which a British security guard and the Romanian captain were killed by a ‘suicide’ drone off the Omani coast on the Japanese-owned, Liberian-flagged vessel.

“We strongly reject these allegations,” Takht-Ravanchi tweeted. “UNSC must confront Israel's adventurism in the region and reject its deceptions and fabrications." The UN Security Council will meet again next week to discuss the incident.

Iran and Israel have for several months traded accusations over attacks on shipping, while Israel has been widely blamed for November’s killing of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and several attacks on Iranian civil nuclear facilities.

In a statement read at the UN Security Council session Friday Zahra Ershadi, Iran's chargé d’affaires at the UN, said Israel "cannot whitewash its destabilizing practices and vicious policies" by blaming Iran. "In almost all incidents in the Middle East, Israel accuses Iran. They do it immediately and provide no evidence."

US Central Command (CENCOM), which oversees the Middle East and Central Asia, on Friday released images of an explosive unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or ‘suicide’ drone, used in the July 29 attack on Mercer Street.

A CENTCOM statement said that US investigators had found remnants of at least three drones − one of which damaged the vessel − that were "nearly identical" to previously-collected Iranian ‘one-way’ attack drones. The statement said this information had been shared with the UK and Israel, whose explosives experts concurred with the US findings. The statement said US experts had concluded the drone had been produced in Iran.

The Pentagon said Friday that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had spoken with Benny Gantz, Israel defense minister and deputy prime minister, with both expressing concern at Iran’s "proliferation and employment of one-way attack UAVs across the region."

Britain has also accused Iran of the attack on Mercer Street. “We know that Iran was responsible,” UK envoy to the UN Barbara Woodward told reporters at the UN in New York Friday after briefing Security Council members.

“There is no justification for what happened: a state-sanctioned attack on a civilian vessel passing peacefully through international waters,” Woodard wrote in a tweet Friday. “The door for diplomacy and dialogue remains open. But if Iran chooses not to take that route, then we would seek to hold Iran to account and apply a cost to that.”

G7 foreign ministers issued a statement Friday holding Iran responsible for “a deliberate and targeted attack, and a clear violation of international law.”