The Rooster
"Okeydoke"
Trump doesn't know when to leave well enough alone.
Great Britain held the Iranian oil tanker, Grace 1, for a month in Gibraltar because Iran was about to violate the Iranian sanctions. Recently, Iran reassured the UK the oil would not be offloaded in any Syrian port. After the agreement was reached the tanker was released to sail to Greece. Suddenly, Trump decided the tanker represented violations of USA sanctions. The government of Gibraltar has not answered the attempt to seize the tanker by Trump for money laundering.
The Iranian Tanker is now underway to Greece. This is an example of how one country cannot enforce sanctions globally when it turns away from alliances and established agreements. The USA came in too late to the situation and an agreement had already been negotiated between the UK and Iran. If the USA wants to enforce autonomous sanctions the State Department should be an active partner from the beginning and not at the end of the dialogue.
Madrid -- An Iranian supertanker (click here) with $130 million worth of light crude oil that the U.S. suspects is tied to a sanctioned organization has left Gibraltar and was heading Monday east into the Mediterranean Sea, with its next destination reported to be Greece.
The Iran-flagged Adrian Darya 1, previously named Grace 1, set course for Kalamata, Greece, with an estimated arrival on Aug. 25, according to ship tracking service MarineTraffic. It wasn't immediately clear why the tanker would be heading there or whether the destination could change.
The vessel left Gibraltar late on Sunday after having been detained for a month in the British overseas territory for allegedly attempting to breach European Union sanctions on Syria. Gibraltar authorities rejected attempts by the U.S. to seize the oil tanker again, arguing that EU regulations are less strict than U.S. sanctions on Iran. And Tehran on Monday warned Washington against any effort to grab the vessel again....
