Tensions escalated in the Strait of Hormuz April 22 after Iran’s IRGC seized two vessels in what analysts describe as “tit-for-tat” retaliation against the U.S. And one ship is linked to a billionaire shipping family tied to Presidents Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron.

Video aired on Iranian state TV purportedly shows IRGC soldiers seizing the container ships in the Strait, Reuters said Thursday.

One vessel, the MSC Francesca, is owned by MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company, which was founded by Italian billionaire Gianluigi Aponte and is now controlled by his two children, Fox News Digital has learned.

“Some 20 Iranians armed to the teeth stormed the ship. Sailors are under Iranian control, their movements on the ship are limited but the Iranians are treating them well,” a relative of one of the MSC Francesca seafarers told Reuters.

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“The ship is anchored 9 nautical miles from the Iranian coast. Negotiations between MSC and Iran are ongoing, our sailors are fine,” Montenegro’s minister of maritime affairs, Filip Radulovic, told state broadcaster RTCG.

Maritime intelligence firm Windward AI pointed to IRGC “tit-for-tat” tactics given the recent MSC vessel seizure.

This followed a U.S. naval blockade imposed on April 13, with Tehran warning of retaliation after U.S. forces also seized an Iranian vessel.

“The IRGC attacked three ships. It also captured and took in two of them — the MSC Francesca and the Epaminondas — while the Euphoria managed to get away,” Windward AI co-founder Ami Daniel told Fox News Digital.

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“This is a ‘tit-for-tat’ exercise by the IRGC, which, along with the Houthis, has long claimed MSC is connected to Israel.

“Aponte, owner and chairman, has a Jewish wife, and MSC calls in Israel; however, so do all major liners.”

Diego Aponte, Gianluigi’s son, had been making “inroads with Trump’s circle,” Bloomberg reported April 13.

He also helped arrange a November 2025 White House meeting with Swiss business leaders that led to a preliminary deal to reduce the 39% tariffs imposed on Switzerland over the summer.

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Over the last year, MSC’s relationship with the White House also positioned father Gianluigi Aponte as a key player in a $19 billion deal with Li Ka-shing, as MSC and BlackRock moved to acquire two Panama Canal ports under pressure from Trump to place them in “friendly” hands, according to the outlet.

With a net worth of at least $37 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, it is Gianluigi Aponte and his wife, Rafaela Aponte-Diamant, who appear to mingle with world leaders.

The MSC executive chairman and Rafaela have been photographed with French President Emmanuel Macron.

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Rafaela is also reportedly related to Alexis Kohler (his mother is said to be her cousin), who served as Macron’s secretary-general from May 2017 to April 14, 2025, and was described as “Macron’s second brain.”

The Aponte family’s vessel, carrying about 40 crew members, was taken toward Iran’s port of Bandar Abbas by the Iranian navy, sources told Reuters Thursday.

Four crew members, including the captain, are from Montenegro, officials said, while Croatia’s foreign ministry confirmed two Croatian nationals are also aboard.

MSC declined to comment, Reuters confirmed.

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The IRGC Navy claimed both vessels captured “were operating without the necessary permits.”

According to Lloyd’s List, the 2008-built MSC Francesca “normally operates in service between the U.S. West Coast, Asia and the Middle East Gulf.”

Three professors at Atlanta’s Emory University in the United States have filed a lawsuit over their arrests during a 2024 campus protest over Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Their lawsuit on Thursday argued that the university broke its own free-speech policies when it called in police and state troopers to aggressively disband the protest, making 28 arrests.

“The judicial system would find that Emory failed to protect its students, to protect its staff, to protect the educational mission of the university,” said philosophy professor Noelle McAfee, one of the plaintiffs.

“So this isn’t just about people’s individual rights. It’s our educational mission to train people in free and critical inquiry, to be able to learn how to engage with others, to be fearless.”

Laura Diamond, a spokesperson for Emory, responded that the university believes “this lawsuit is without merit”.

“Emory acts appropriately and responsibly to keep our community safe from threats of harm,” Diamond said in a statement. “We regret this issue is being litigated, but we have confidence in the legal process.”

The suit is just one example of how the nationwide wave of protests from 2023 and 2024 continues to reverberate on elite campuses.

There have been multiple instances where students and faculty have filed lawsuits against universities, arguing they were discriminated against because of the protests.

But the Emory suit is unusual. McAfee and her fellow plaintiffs — English and Indigenous studies professor Emilio Del Valle-Escalante and economics professor Caroline Fohlin — all remain tenured faculty members. None were convicted of any charges.

The civil lawsuit in DeKalb County State Court demands that the private university repay money the three spent defending themselves against misdemeanour charges that were later dismissed, along with punitive damages.

McAfee said she’s suing her employer “to try to get them to be accountable and to change”.

All three say they were observers on April 25, 2024, when some students and others set up tents on the university’s main quad to protest the war. They say Emory broke its own policies by calling in Atlanta police and Georgia state troopers without seeking alternatives.

McAfee was charged with disorderly conduct after she said she yelled “Stop!” at an officer roughly arresting a protester. Del Valle-Escalante said he was trying to help an older woman when he was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

Fohlin said that, when she protested against officers pinning a protester to the ground, she herself was thrown face-first to the ground and arrested, suffering a concussion and a spine injury. Fohlin was charged with misdemeanour battery of an officer.

Emory claimed that those arrested that day were outsiders who trespassed on school property. But 20 of the 28 people arrested were affiliated with the university.

The professors said that, after their arrests, they were targeted by threats and harassment, part of a pushback by conservatives who said universities were failing to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism and allowing lawlessness.

Nationwide, however, advocates say there is a “Palestine exception” in which universities are willing to curb pro-Palestine speech and protest. Palestine Legal, a legal aid group supporting such speech, said Tuesday that it received 300 percent more legal requests in 2025 than its annual average before 2023, mostly from college students and faculty.

McAfee served as president of the Emory University Senate after her arrest. The body makes policy recommendations and has helped draft the university’s open expression policy.

She said she asked then-President Gregory Fenves in fall 2024 why Emory police weren’t dropping the charges against her and others. McAfee said Fenves told her that he wanted “to see justice”.

The open expression policy was revised after 2024 to clearly prohibit tents, camping, the occupation of university buildings and demonstrations between midnight and 7am.

Whatever the policy, McAfee said students are afraid to protest at Emory, saying the university has turned its back on what Atlanta civil rights icon John Lewis called “good trouble”.

“Students know right now that any trouble is not going to be good trouble at Emory, that they could get arrested,” she said. “So students are afraid.”