Iran tanker released in Gibraltar despite US bid to seize it

By Bill Van Auken 

16 August 2019

The decision announced by a judge in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar Thursday to release an Iranian oil tanker Grace 1, seized by the British Royal Marines on July 4, was taken despite a last-minute intervention by the US Justice Department.

The US authorities used an email sent at 1:30 in the morning to communicate their demand that the ship be held so that Washington could file its own pseudo-legal case for taking control of it.

Chief Justice Anthony Dudley of Gibraltar’s supreme court ruled Thursday afternoon that there were no legal grounds for continuing to hold the tanker, which had been seized on the pretext of enforcing unilateral sanctions imposed by the European Union—which Britain is deserting—against the shipment of oil to Syrian facilities controlled by the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The judge likewise dismissed the US demand, saying that no legal papers had been filed with the court.

The Iranian government, following negotiations with British officials in London, issued a formal letter to the authorities in Gibraltar pledging that the Grace 1 would not deliver its load of 2.1 million barrels of crude oil, valued at $140 million, to any “entity” proscribed by the EU sanctions. Tehran indicated that the ship would sail to an unspecified destination in the Mediterranean.

The EU anti-Syrian sanctions were merely a pretext for what amounted to an act of piracy by the British military. Spain’s Foreign Ministry and other diplomatic sources have revealed that the action was carried out at the behest of Washington as a means of ratcheting up tensions under conditions in which US provocations have placed a war in the Persian Gulf on a hair trigger.

The war drive has been initiated entirely by Washington, beginning with the Trump administration’s May 2018 abrogation of the Iran nuclear accord signed between Tehran and the major world powers. It re-imposed a sanctions regime that is tantamount to a state of war, while announcing a “maximum pressure” campaign aimed at reducing Iranian oil exports to zero.

This was followed by a military buildup in the Persian Gulf, with the deployment of a carrier battle group along with a B-52 bomber strike force and the drafting of plans to send 120,000 US troops to the Middle East in the event of war.

The threat of a full-scale war that could quickly drag in the major powers was made clear in June when President Donald Trump revealed that he had come within 10 minutes of launching devastating air strikes on Iranian targets in retaliation for Iran’s downing of an unmanned US spy drone.

The British seizure of the Grace 1 was followed barely two weeks later by Iran’s seizure of a British-flagged oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian authorities charged that the tanker, the Stena Impero, had violated numerous regulations while sailing in Iranian waters, hitting a fishing boat, turning off its transponder and refusing to respond to Iranian authorities. London dismissed the charges, insisting that there was no comparison between the “legal” seizure of the Grace 1 and the “illegal” and virtually identical taking of the Stena Impero.

There has been widespread speculation that the release of the Grace 1 would be reciprocated by the release of the Stena Impero.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/08/16/iran-a16.html