
Originally Posted by
Seran
Iran claims it has seized a third foreign oil tanker in the Gulf in a further escalation of tensions between Tehran and Washington and its regional allies, who continue to stare each other down over crippling economic sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.
Iranian state media claimed the tanker was Iraqi and was seized on Wednesday in a northern part of the strait of Hormuz with a cargo of 700,000 litres of oil bound for neighbouring Arab states. The strait is one of the world’s most important waterways, on which a combustible standoff has played out since early July, when a British warship intercepted an Iranian tanker off the coast of Gibraltar.
Leaders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have explicitly linked the seizure of the Stena Impero and its crew to the capture of the Iranian vessel, Grace 1, which Britain and the US claim was smuggling fuel to Syria. The seizure came amid a campaign of “maximum pressure” designed to
diplomatically isolate Tehran and cripple its oil-dependent economy.
The stated US aim of tightened economic sanctions, which were reimposed in May, is to force Iran to renegotiate the nuclear deal signed between both countries in 2015, but which Donald Trump withdrew from last year. That deal lifted a sanctions regime and allowed Iran to renew international oil trading in return for it agreeing not to enrich uranium – an essential component of a nuclear weapons programme, which its leaders had long been accused of secretly building.
In the wake of Washington reneging on the deal, Iran has vowed to resume uranium enrichment and to continue trading oil, on which its increasingly vulnerable economy depends.
The latest seizure comes days after the US imposed sanctions on Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif – the official who negotiated the nuclear deal with the Obama administration. The unusual move to sanction a global diplomat removes from the table the only senior Iranian official with whom senior US diplomats are familiar, and appears to place further obstacles in the way of a diplomatic solution to the crisis, which regional observers insist has the potential to spill over into a devastating war.
You can thank Trump for destabilizing the middle east and oil shipment in pointless withdrawal of the monitoring and enrichment agreement struck. Much as he withdrew our cooperation with the World Health Organization right before Covid-19 and trade treaties right before a recession he caused.