Page 6 - MEOG Week 39

MEOG PIPeLInes & transPort MEOG
Seized UK tanker arrives in Dubai after Iran permits release
Iran
THEUK-flaggedStenaImperooiltankerseized by Iran arrived at Dubai’s Port Rashid on Sep- tember 29 after Iranian officials allowed it to go on its way.
The vessel left Iran’s Bandar Abbas port after being detained for 10 weeks. Iran’s Revolution- ary Guard seized the Stena Impero in the Strait of Hormuz in apparent retaliation for Britain’s grabbing of the Iranian Grace 1 tanker off the Strait of Gibraltar in a move Iran claimed was made at the behest of the US.
The UK denied that was the case and Gibral- tar freed the ship in mid-August in return for a pledge from Iran that it would not deliver its oil to Syria in breach of EU sanctions.
The UK protested to Iran after the Grace 1 sailed on to Syria and, say British officials, appeared to breach the promise not to deliver the oil to the Damascus regime. Tehran responded that no pledges had been broken but would not discuss who the recipients of the oil were.
The Swedish operator of Stena Impero, Stena Bulk, said the crew were all safe and in high spir- its and would be repatriated via Dubai.
The fates of the Stena Impero and Grace 1 highlighted tensions caused by the US attempt to drive all Iranian oil of world export mar- kets, which has been under way since May, and has caused Iran to mount major grey market manoeuvres, including attempts to avoid track- ing by US officials imposing sanctions by mak- ing ship-to-ship transfers of crude bound for willing buyers.
Hopes that Iran and the US might take some steps towards resolving their standoff on the sidelines of last week’s UN General Assembly were entirely frustrated as the week ended with the Trump administration aiming more sanc- tions at Tehran.
The sour state of affairs was underlined when Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was forced to have an online video conver- sation with Tehran’s cancer-stricken ambassador to the UN, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, on September 28, after the US State Department said it would only allow him to visit Takht-Ravanchi if Iran released a US prisoner.
A video of Zarif being stopped by police alleg- edly attempting to enter the hospital in New York is circulating on social media.
“Foreign Minister Zarif would like to visit a colleague who is in the hospital receiving world- class care. Iran has wrongfully detained several US citizens for years, to the pain of their fami- lies and friends they cannot freely visit,” a State Department spokesperson told France’s AFP.
“We have relayed to the Iranian mission that the travel request will be granted if Iran releases
aUScitizen,”thespokespersonsaid.
Zarif and other Iranian officials must adhere
to strict travel restrictions when they are in the US that limit their movement to six blocks from the UN headquarters.
Separately, a young Iranian mother sentenced in the US for violating sanctions arrived at Imam Khomeini International Airport (IKIA) follow- ing an early release from a 27-month sentence, local media reported on September 29.
A legal resident of Australia, Negar Ghodskani was released by a judge in Minneap- olis on September 24, after he said her detention in Australia and the US amounted to enough to meet sentence requirements.
Ghodskani “is now free in Iran with her fam- ily,” her lawyer Robert Richman said in an email. She is one of a number of Iranian nationals who have been seized by US authorities in the past few years. Iran’s foreign minister Zarif has raised her case several times during interviews on Western television channels. In one instance, Zarif suggested a straight swap for British pass- port holder Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe who
remains in prison in Iran.
Ghodskani was arrested in Adelaide in 2017
after US prosecutors said that in breach of sanc- tions she sought digital communications tech- nology by claiming she was an employee of a Malaysian tech firm.
The US courts said she was, in fact, acting as a representative for an Iranian company called Fanamoj, which works closely with Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB).
After her extradition to the US, she confessed participation in a plan to ship sanctioned items to Iran, the US Justice Department has previ- ously said.™
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Week 39 01•October•2019