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Title: Iran Says It Has Seized Another Oil Tanker [Iraqi] in Persian Gulf
Source:
NYTimes via MSN
URL Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl ... ker-in-persian-gulf/ar-AAFjKpS
Published: Aug 5, 2019
Author: Vivian Yee, Yonette Joseph and Iliana Ma
Post Date: 2019-08-05 07:35:55 by Tooconservative
Keywords: None
Views: 3508
Comments: 31
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps detained the tanker on Wednesday along with the seven members of the ship’s foreign crew, according to official Iranian news agencies, which cited a naval commander. Iran said the tanker was “smuggling” fuel to some Arab states, without offering evidence. The oil tanker was an Iraqi ship, the official IRNA news agency reported, quoting the Revolutionary Guards Corps. The Trump administration has tried to force Iran into submission by choking off its oil sales, the cornerstone of the country’s economy. Iran has responded by lashing out at the West through provocations small and large — including the recent tanker seizures — raising fears that any miscalculation and tit-for-tat responses would escalate into war. The Trump administration’s stated goal is to extract a nuclear deal from Iran that is more favorable to American interests than the 2015 agreement that President Trump abandoned last year. Critics say, however, the administration has only undermined any path to diplomacy by making demands that Iran cannot accept. The Iranians, in turn, have taken steps to renege on their commitments under the 2015 deal and have threatened to violate the agreement further unless European countries that co-signed the deal offer some relief from the sanctions. The Europeans have made clear that they hope to preserve the deal, but they have not been able to give a meaningful boost to Iran’s economy, which is reeling under the weight of the sanctions. That has led to a split between Europe and the United States despite their common interest in making sure crucial oil shipping routes in the Persian Gulf are protected against Iranian and other threats. The Trump administration has sought to rally a maritime force to escort ships through the Gulf, but European nations have distanced themselves from the effort, and Germany has outright said no. The latest foreign vessel Iran said it had seized received fuel from other ships and had been transporting it to Arab countries in the Persian Gulf, the commander of Iran’s Second Marine Corps said to Iran’s semiofficial Fars News Agency . The ship was detained in coordination with judicial authorities, he said. The commander said the ship had been carrying about 700,000 liters of fuel, about 185,000 United States standard gallons. Fars said on Twitter that seven foreign nationals had been detained . The Mehr news agency reported that the ship had been seized near Farsi Island , a tiny, barren Iranian territory northwest of the Strait of Hormuz. The Iraqi oil ministry denied any relationship with the tanker detained by Iran, said Asim Jihad, the ministry’s spokesman. Iraq and Iran are allies, raising questions among some in Iraqi intelligence about whether the seizure might have been a mistake. The Revolutionary Guards said the ship had been seized to the south of the Iranian island of Larak in the northern part of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that is a vital conduit for maritime petroleum traffic in and out of the Persian Gulf. The oil tanker was then transferred to Bushehr Province and its cargo delivered to the department of the National Iranian Oil Product Distribution Company in the same province, Mehr reported. The state-run Iranian television outlet Press TV later released video footage of what it said was the seized ship, showing a smaller boat approaching the vessel and images of oil in the hull. No identifying marks on the larger tanker were visible. In July, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps detained a foreign oil tanker said to have been smuggling fuel, state news media reported. The latest seizure was reported days after the United States imposed sanctions on the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, an American-educated diplomat who was a key negotiator for the 2015 nuclear deal between Western powers and Tehran. American officials have said that the foreign minister is part of a “propaganda arm” for Iran. But experts said the sanctions would make it more difficult to engage in any new diplomacy. Iranian officials called the move petty and provocative. Iran and the West have been embroiled in a dispute over shipping near the Strait of Hormuz as European countries scramble to save the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran after Mr. Trump pulled the United States out of the accord last year. Britain seized an Iranian tanker, the Grace 1, off the coast of Gibraltar in July, saying it suspected the ship had been headed to Syria in violation of European Union sanctions. Iran called the seizure an act of piracy, and accused Britain of acting on behalf of Washington. Later that month, Revolutionary Guards troops also detained a British-flagged tanker, the Stena Impero , near the Strait of Hormuz, accusing it of violating three international naval regulations. Iran appeared to link the British seizure of its tanker and the ailing nuclear deal. “Since Iran is entitled to export its oil according to the J.C.P.O.A., any impediment in the way of Iran’s export of oil is actually against the J.C.P.O.A.,” Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said after emergency talks in Vienna a week ago. That day, a second British Royal Navy warship, the Duncan, arrived in the Persian Gulf to escort ships flying the British flag through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has warned other countries against sending vessels to act as escorts, with a government spokesman in Tehran, Ali Rabiei, saying that such a move would carry “a hostile message, is provocative and will increase tensions.” On May 2, the Trump administration’s oil sanctions against Iran came into full effect. It is not illegal under international law to buy and haul Iranian oil or related products, but foreign companies that ignore the sanctions risk being punished by the United States. An examination of the movements of more than 70 Iranian tankers since May 2 found that 12 had loaded oil after that date and had delivered it to China or the eastern Mediterranean, where the buyers might have included Syria or Turkey. Only some of the 12 tankers were previously known to have recently delivered Iranian oil. The continued flow of oil highlights the difficulty that the Trump administration has had in using sanctions to bring Iranian oil exports to zero.
(1 image) BEIRUT, Lebanon — Iran seized a foreign oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, state television reported on Sunday, the third time Tehran has reported detaining a tanker in the last month as the United States applies its campaign of “maximum pressure,” sanctions and diplomatic isolation against the country. 
Iranian Revolutionary Guards on a boat near an oil tanker at the port of Bandar Abbas, Iran, in July.
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#1. To: Tooconservative, pinguinite (#0)
Surgical strikes to kill all of Irans leaders.
I'm really not sure how much of this is just oil piracy from Iran and how much is just an aggressive display against the West. The sanctions have hit Iran hard. Perhaps oil piracy is a sign of the end of a corrupt regime.
China is still buying Iranian oil. It needs a lot of oil.
People keep saying that kind of thing but when have sanctions ever inspired a revolution in the target country? With Cuba it went on for some 50 years?
That is why we should kill Irans pussy leaders. Mulsims are pieces of shit.
But he's not suggested any such alternative deal. Trump is supposed to be good at deals. Didn't he write a book about that? Truth is, he wants no deal at all because Israel told him so. This is the kind of journalism that does no one any favors. Since the agreement has been trashed, there's no "reneging on their commitments" and cannot "violate the agreement further". How can you do that to an agreement that the other party has cancelled? Apparently, the Europeans agreement to the deal is completely worthless as they are completely incapable of providing Iran anything of value in exchange for Iranian concessions. And if they really do want to preserve the deal, seizing Iran's tanker sure was a piss-poor way of expressing that sentiment. Europe is behaving quite stupidly. The US doesn't want a deal because Israel said so. Iran is going over the top in these seizures, not reciprocating in balanced fashion, and their claim that they will not reciprocate tanker releases is not credible. Everyone is making this a clusterf**k.
And this sentiment can be added to my prior list.
(9:5) And when the forbidden months have passed, kill the idolaters wherever you find them and take them prisoners, and beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent and observe Prayer and pay the Zakat, then leave their way free. Surely, Allah is Most Forgiving, Merciful. Everyone who calls themselves a muslim and practices the above verse from the Koran is a terrorist who should be shown no mercy. Why do you defend terrorists?
There are more than a few similar passages in the Old Testament.
You are naive. The shit Koran teaches to lie to your enemies. This is one of many verses that teaches these shit heads to lie. Only an idiot would make a deal with a muslim piece of shit. Destroy all their mosques and we wont. That should be the deal. Sahih Bukhari (49:857) - "He who makes peace between the people by inventing good information or saying good things, is not a liar." Lying is permitted when the end justifies the means.
Nope. Context is everything.
You are making stuff up. Trump just isn't stupid like Obama the fake president. It almost sounds like you hate Jews and love muslim terrorists.
Apparently, only for Christians.
Stone... don't start with me.
Precisely what the British should do !!!
Si vis pacem, para bellum Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. "If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went." (Will Rogers) "No one ever rescues an old dog. They lay in a cage until they die. PLEASE save one. None of us wants to die cold and alone... --Dennis Olson " People that say money can't buy you happiness, have never paid an adoption fee
Start with you. Give me a break. Your asinine statement needed to be rebuked
Another asinine statementthatis a lie.
JCPOA is a UN protocol for limiting Iran's ability to build nukes. It was "between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States—plus Germany)[a] together with the European Union." So the EU members would like to ignore Trump's sanctions but they can't cross Trump on this. However, the EU is still conducting diplomacy with Iran (which America has not done formally since the Carter era). So we have pulled out of the agreement but the EU didn't. I notice that, of the vessels Iran seized, only one was a legit oil tanker and they released it in a few hours. The rest are ships that Iran claims was pirating oil. And we hear no claims from the owners of the oil taken from those ships. For some reason, the owners of those ships and that oil just don't want to demand satisfaction publicly from Iran seizing their ships/oil. So there may be significant small-scale oil piracy in Iran. I recall during the sanctions on Iraq many years back, the Iraqis developed a bizarre system where they were smuggling oil by truck over the border into Jordan and would load it on these little tramp freighters. Some of it was tanker trucks, others were freight trucks hauling barrels of oil. I think Britain may be using its involvement to remind the EU that it would be better to let Britain go. As an EU member, Britain has now dragged the EU into the matter of the seized tanker in Gibraltar. It was interesting to see how the Iranian tanker got seized even as May stepped down as PM and they installed Boris as PM of Britain. That was the Brit establishment acting. It was very deliberate.
They did by reducing severely the trade with Iran. It was a serious violation of the deal, then Iran is legally free to do what it pleases. Not really, the party of BoJo and May lost popular support and mandate, yet they still cling desperately to power and refuse to call new elections. It is a narrowing faction. Corbyn, Farage and Scots are rising. You might find it interesting: joint naval exercises between Iran and Russia are going to take place in the Gulf and beyond.
We largely crushed the Sandinistas with sanctions. And the containment policy of NATO did eventually strangle the USSR as they spent beyond the means of their economy to support. And that included a great many sanctions against the USSR, restrictions on currency, exports to the Soviets, etc. And Cuba had survived all those years as almost the sole international Soviet puppet state. Cuba did eventually get cut off from Soviet/Russian treasury when they slashed all the spending and turned so many small Soviet republics loose, even ones like Georgia and Belarus and Ukraine. They all got cut off from the Soviet teat. And with the Soviets gone, we just continued our boycott of Cuba. And it is a dismal Stalinist hellhole.
I see it otherwise. We'll see in coming months.
Time to get new glasses, geezer.
And they came back to power.
China doesn't rely on these little tramp tankers that seem to be operating as small-scale pirates. This is two-bit off-shore trafficking, not some major contract. Probably oil going to some backward regime like Yemen.
Not like before. Nowadays, it is Venezuela that poses a threat. Not some retro-Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Even back in the day, it was the perception of Nicaragua as a state entering a client status with the Soviets that drew such opposition. Now, with no Soviets to back them, we don't care that much about Nicaragua. And Nicaragua isn't the worst country in South America. That would be Venezuela. It may not be the second-worst or third-worst either.
You are right, they bring Iranian oil in huge tankers. They see the attempts to cut it as an attempt of sanction or blockade against China as their demand for energy resources is huge and rising. MSM are mute, so you don't know.
What threat? Do you feel threatened by Maduro?
Maduro has tried to align with Russia, much as the Sandinistas did with the Soviets. The problem is that Russia expects Venezuela to pay for services. And Venezuela has destroyed its economy with corruption and incompetence. So that budding attempt by Maduro to buy Russian backing ended up going nowhere. It seems some of the Russian technicians and military advisers have already returned to Russia because Maduro couldn't pay. Russia can't afford any clients beyond Assad at present. Even in Syria, Russia has already drawn back compared to what they were doing 1.5 years back.
I found out. The oil for domestic use on Iran is subsidized and costs around 38 cents per gallon, so some are smuggling it abroad.
Well, okay. But Iran isn't selling crude oil to its citizens. It sounds like this is crude oil being pilfered from pipelines and storage tanks or even direct from wells, not like they're stealing refined oil from Iran's lone refinery.
Stone, I don't mind people challenging what I say. I do mind when someone makes a claim about my state of mind, as you did when you said: I'm not going to put up with that shit, okay? I'll defend or correct what points I make, but I'm not going to waste time defending my person. If you cannot differentiate between the two, then there's no point in trying to hold a conversation. I'll tell you I have half a dozen people on bozo here because I've determined reading their info and conversing with them is a waste of my time. I'm not going to put you on bozo as you are site owner, but if it comes to the point where I would do it if you were not site owner, I'll depart the site completely. I actually run 4um now so that's not an inappropriate thing to do anyway. I saw your post about maybe switching to new software. That's perfectly fine with me if that's what you want to do. It's completely your call, of course. I won't take it personally at all, regardless of whether I stay or not.
That day, a second British Royal Navy warship, the Duncan, arrived in the Persian Gulf to escort ships flying the British flag through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has warned other countries against sending vessels to act as escorts, with a government spokesman in Tehran, Ali Rabiei, saying that such a move would carry “a hostile message, is provocative and will increase tensions.”
#2. To: A K A Stone (#1)
#3. To: Tooconservative (#2)
The sanctions have hit Iran hard. Perhaps oil piracy is a sign of the end of a corrupt regime.
#4. To: Tooconservative (#2)
The sanctions have hit Iran hard. Perhaps oil piracy is a sign of the end of a corrupt regime.
#5. To: Pinguinite (#4)
#6. To: Tooconservative (#0)
The Trump administration’s stated goal is to extract a nuclear deal from Iran that is more favorable to American interests than the 2015 agreement that President Trump abandoned last year.
The Iranians, in turn, have taken steps to renege on their commitments under the 2015 deal and have threatened to violate the agreement further unless European countries that co-signed the deal offer some relief from the sanctions.
The Europeans have made clear that they hope to preserve the deal, but they have not been able to give a meaningful boost to Iran’s economy, which is reeling under the weight of the sanctions.
#7. To: A K A Stone (#5)
That is why we should kill Irans pussy leaders. Mulsims are pieces of shit.
#8. To: Pinguinite (#7)
#9. To: A K A Stone (#8)
#10. To: Pinguinite (#6)
Trump is supposed to be good at deals. Didn't he write a book about that? Truth is, he wants no deal at all because Israel told him so.
#11. To: Pinguinite (#9)
There are more than a few similar passages in the Old Testament.
#12. To: Pinguinite (#6)
The US doesn't want a deal because Israel said so.
#13. To: A K A Stone (#11)
Nope. Context is everything.
#14. To: A K A Stone (#12)
It almost sounds like you hate Jews and love muslim terrorists.
#15. To: A K A Stone (#1)
" Surgical strikes to kill all of Irans leaders. "
#16. To: Pinguinite (#14)
(Edited)
#17. To: Pinguinite (#13)
#18. To: Pinguinite (#6)
Since the agreement has been trashed, there's no "reneging on their commitments" and cannot "violate the agreement further". How can you do that to an agreement that the other party has cancelled?
Apparently, the Europeans agreement to the deal is completely worthless as they are completely incapable of providing Iran anything of value in exchange for Iranian concessions. And if they really do want to preserve the deal, seizing Iran's tanker sure was a piss-poor way of expressing that sentiment.
#19. To: Tooconservative (#18)
(Edited)
So we have pulled out of the agreement but the EU didn't.
That was the Brit establishment acting. It was very deliberate.
#20. To: Pinguinite (#4)
People keep saying that kind of thing but when have sanctions ever inspired a revolution in the target country? With Cuba it went on for some 50 years?
#21. To: A Pole (#19)
Not really, the party of BoJo and May lost popular support and mandate, yet they still cling desperately to power and refuse to call new elections. It is a narrowing faction. Corbyn, Farage and Scots are rising.
#22. To: Tooconservative (#21)
I see it otherwise.
#23. To: Tooconservative (#20)
We largely crushed the Sandinistas with sanctions
#24. To: A Pole (#3)
China is still buying Iranian oil. It needs a lot of oil.
#25. To: A Pole (#23)
And they came back to power.
#26. To: Tooconservative (#24)
"China doesn't rely on these little tramp tankers that seem to be operating as small-scale pirates. "
#27. To: Tooconservative (#25)
Nowadays, it is Venezuela that poses a threat.
#28. To: A Pole (#27)
#29. To: Tooconservative (#24)
This is two-bit off-shore trafficking, not some major contract.
#30. To: A Pole (#29)
The oil for domestic use on Iran is subsidized and costs around 38 cents per gallon, so some are smuggling it abroad.
#31. To: A K A Stone (#16)
Start with you. Give me a break. Your asinine statement needed to be rebuked
It almost sounds like you hate Jews and love muslim terrorists.
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