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All tagged GRACE 1
◢ A senior US official personally offered several million dollars to the Indian captain of an Iranian oil tanker suspected of heading to Syria, the State Department confirmed Wednesday. The Financial Times reported that Brian Hook, the State Department point-man on Iran, sent emails to captain Akhilesh Kumar in which he offered "good news" of millions in US cash.
◢ Iran said it sold an oil cargo on board a contested tanker sailing the Mediterranean Sea but didn’t know where the vessel was going amid U.S. efforts to block delivery of the crude. The Adrian Darya 1, the tanker that the U.S. sought to seize in Gibraltar last week, was sailing more than halfway into the Mediterranean Sea on Monday without declaring any destination.
◢ The Government of Gibraltar says European Union regulations don’t allow it to seek a court order to seize a tanker which the U.S. accuses of breaching its sanctions by exporting Iranian oil. Grace 1, now renamed Adrian Darya, changed its intended destination on Monday to the Greek port of Kalamata and has now departed Gibraltar.
◢ Iranian officials on Friday denied that any assurances were given to Gibraltar to release an Iranian tanker now sailing on into the Mediterranean, calling it a "victory" for Tehran. "Iran has given no assurances over the Grace 1 not going to Syria to secure its release," the state broadcaster's youth website quoted foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi as saying Friday.
◢ A Gibraltar court agreed to release the supertanker Grace 1, which had been held since last month on suspicion of hauling Iranian crude oil to Syria in violation of European sanctions. The U.S. was seeking to seize the vessel, though it didn’t put in a legal request to do so, according to the judge in the case.
◢ The United States applied on Thursday for Gibraltar to keep in detention an Iranian oil tanker at the center of a stand-off between Tehran and London, the public prosecutor said. Chief Justice Anthony Dudley made clear that were it not for the US move, "the ship would have sailed" from the overseas British territory.
◢ Iran expects an oil tanker seized by the U.K. in the Strait of Gibraltar in July will be released soon, the semi-official Fars News agency reported Tuesday. “Official and unofficial documents have been exchanged to resolve the matter and we hope the problem will be dealt with in the very near future,” said Jalil Eslami, deputy for maritime affairs at Iran’s Ports and Maritime Organization.
◢ The United States has asked Germany to join an international naval mission to help secure the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the US embassy in Berlin said on Tuesday. "We've formally asked Germany to join France and the UK to help secure the Strait of Hormuz and combat Iranian aggression," said a statement by embassy spokeswoman Tamara Sternberg-Greller.
◢ Britain on Monday ruled out swapping seized oil tankers with Iran as a second UK warship arrived in the Gulf to conduct convoys that have irritated Tehran. A sense of crisis in the world's busiest oil shipping lane has been building up for weeks as Iran responds to US President Donald Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign.
◢ Iran on Sunday called Britain's seizure of an Iranian oil tanker a breach of an ailing 2015 nuclear deal, after remaining parties to the accord met in Vienna in a bid to keep it alive. "Since Iran is entitled to export its oil according to the JCPOA, any impediment in the way of Iran's export of oil is actually against the JCPOA," Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said.
◢ Soaring tensions with Iran following attacks on tankers and drones prompted the Trump administration to call for a coalition of allies to protect ships passing through the Persian Gulf. This week, U.S. partners including the U.K. and France essentially asked to be counted out.
◢ President Hassan Rouhani hinted on Wednesday that Iran is open to a possible tanker swap with Britain and indirect talks with the United States over its nuclear program and sanctions. "We don't want tensions with some European countries," Rouhani said in comments to a cabinet meeting posted on the official website of his government.
◢ Iran warned Sunday that the fate of a UK-flagged tanker it seized in the Gulf depends on an investigation, as Britain said it was considering options in response to the standoff. Authorities impounded the Stena Impero with 23 crew members aboard off the port of Bandar Abbas after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps seized it Friday in the highly sensitive Strait of Hormuz.
◢ Gibraltar's Chief Minister Fabian Picardo said Thursday he had a "constructive and positive" meeting with Iranian officials in London aimed at defusing tensions around an oil tanker carrying Iranian oil being held in the British territory's waters. Picardo's government said the meeting took to discuss the continued detention of the Grace One tanker "and to seek to de-escalate all aspects of the issues arising.”
◢ British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt sought to ease tensions with Iran on Saturday, saying a tanker held by Gibraltar would be released if Tehran guaranteed it was not heading to Syria. He said he had a "constructive call" with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif, who he said assured him that Tehran "is not seeking to escalate" tensions between the countries.
◢ British special forces seized a supertanker off Gibraltar suspected of carrying Iranian oil to Syria in violation of European and U.S. sanctions against the war-torn country. Gibraltar didn’t say where the crude came from, but shipping tracking data compiled by Bloomberg suggest the vessel loaded at Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminal in mid-April.
