asdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasd
All tagged Gibraltar
◢ 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.
◢ Iran warned the U.S. against apprehending a supertanker carrying the Middle East country’s oil and said it couldn’t be clear on the ship’s ultimate destination, leaving the fate of the vessel uncertain as it sailed into the Mediterranean Sea from Gibraltar, where it had been detained.
◢ 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.
◢ 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.
