ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iran’s defense minister threatened on Monday to retaliate against the United Kingdom for seizing an oil tanker in the Strait of Gibraltar describing the act as "piracy at sea."
The threat comes three days after the head of the powerful Expediency Council Mohsen Rezaee called on the Iranian security forces and officials to take action against Britain. The Expediency Council adjudicates between the parliament and the Guardian Council.
“This action is contrary to international regulations and is piracy at sea,” Amir Hatami, the Minister of Defense said on Monday in southern Hormozgan Province where Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) shot down a US reconnaissance drone on June 20. “Certainly, this kind of piracy at sea would not be tolerated by us and would not be without a response.”
On Thursday, a unit of British Royal Marines boarded the Grace 1 supertanker in the Strait of Gibraltar believing it was carrying oil to Baniyas Refinery in Syria which has been on the EU sanction list since 2014. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi denied on Sunday that the tanker was heading to Syria and said Iran had appointed lawyers for a legal battle.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Abbas Mousavi revealed on Monday that the supertanker previously had attempted to cross the Suez Canal. However, it was turned back and then tried the Gibraltar route.
“We call on the British government to release this tanker containing Iranian crude oil. We see this as piracy at sea and do not accept it,” Mousavi told reporters on Monday in Tehran. “Of course, we have given [them] the required warnings.”
The threatening language by the Minister of Defense is likely to escalate US-Iran tension after the spokesperson for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s government announced on Sunday that it was not bound by the level of enrichment uranium set in the Iranian nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States plus Germany).
Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesperson for the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran, said on Monday that his country has indeed increased the level of enrichment and will inform the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) today.
“The enrichment level in the country has surpassed 3.67 [percent] and at this moment the concentration of the produced material is around 4.5 percent ... the current level of enrichment corresponds with our needs to generate fuel for the [nuclear] power reactors that the country needs," he told Farsnews.
Since withdrawing from the nuclear deal in May 2018, the US government has re-imposed crippling sanctions against Iran, especially targeting its banking and oil sector. Washington says it wants to zero Iranian oil exports, as Tehran says it was doing everything in its power to bypass sanctions.
“Announcing the oil export figures is difficult for me, if I say our situation is good, the Americans would be angry and exert more pressure [on us]. If I say they [export figures] are not good, people would be concerned,” Bijan Zanganeh, Iran’s oil minister, said in an extensive interview on national TV on Sunday.
He revealed that in addition to the Grace 1, two other tankers are facing problems in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Iran was doing everything to resolve the issues.
While Iran claims it is still exporting oil, the Americans say actual oil exports have dropped to around 300,000 barrel per day (bpd). After the news Grace 1 detention last week, sources claimed the action was taken at the request of a third party, the United States.
The Gibraltar government has denied the claim: “there has been no political request at any time … the decisions of Her Majesty’s Government of Gibraltar were taken totally independently, based on breaches of existing law and not at all based on extraneous political considerations.”
On Friday it was announced that holding the supertanker was extended by 14 days pending further investigations.
Update: 2:59 p.m.
