WASHINGTON: TheUnited States has blacklisted the Iranian tanker Adrian Darya, saying it had"reliable information" it was transporting oil to Syria in defianceof wide-ranging sanctions on the regime of Bashar Al-Assad. Previously known asGrace 1, the vessel was seized in July by British Royal Marines and held inGibraltar for six weeks on suspicion it was delivering oil for Tehran's allyDamascus.
The oil tanker atthe center of a dispute between Washington and Tehran is no longer headingtowards Turkey's Iskenderun port and now has no specified destination,Refinitiv ship tracking data showed yesterday. Refinitiv tracking dataregistered the ship's destination as "for order", after previouslylisting it as Iskenderun. "For order" usually means a vessel isavailable for charter.
Iranian ForeignMinister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused the United States on Twitter of engagingin "piracy and threats" to stop Tehran selling oil to traditionalclients.
The Britishterritory released the ship-despite US protests-after it said it had receivedwritten assurances from Iran that the vessel would not head for countries underEuropean Union sanctions. Tehran later denied it had made any promises aboutthe ship's destination. "We have reliable information that the tanker isunderway and headed to Tartus, Syria," US Secretary of State Mike Pompeosaid in a tweet Friday.
The US Departmentof Treasury said the vessel was "blocked property" under an anti-terroristorder, and "anyone providing support to the Adrian Darya 1 risks beingsanctioned". The ship's captain, Akhilesh Kumar, was also blacklistedunder the order. Since its release from Gibraltar, the Adrian Darya has beenbouncing around the Mediterranean, its every move followed with intensespeculation. The vessel was in waters north of Cyprus as of 0745 GMT, accordingto the MarineTraffic tracking website.
Lebanon hadearlier dismissed Turkish claims that it would receive the ship, which has acargo of 2.1 million barrels worth around $140 million. While Iran has deniedselling the oil to Damascus, experts said the likely scenario was for aship-to-ship transfer, with a Syrian port as the final destination.
Maritime trafficmonitors had shown that the Adrian Darya's latest listed destinations, whichare not necessarily the next approved port of call, were in Turkey. Aftertracking sites showed Mersin as its destination, it then switched toIskenderun, prompting a reaction from Turkey's foreign minister Friday."This tanker is not heading actually to Iskenderun (in Turkey), thistanker is heading to Lebanon," Mevlut Cavusoglu said during a visit toOslo.
Lebanon swiftlydismissed the scenario, stressing that it never buys crude oil because it doesnot have refineries, and adding that it had not received any docking requestsfrom the tanker. Iran said Monday it had "sold the oil" aboard thetanker and that the owner will decide the destination.
It did notidentify the buyer or say whether the oil had been sold before or after thetanker's detention in the Strait of Gibraltar. It also said it could not namethe actual destination due to "economic terrorism" by the UnitedStates and its sanctions on Iran's oil sales. In July, Iran's IslamicRevolutionary Guard Corps impounded a British-flagged tanker in strategic Gulfwaters. Britain called it a tit-for-tat move but Tehran denied any connection.
'Aimlesslymoseying'
The Adrian Darya1 set sail for the eastern Mediterranean three days after it was released.According to maritime traffic monitoring websites, the huge tanker has changeddirection multiple times, following no apparent logic. The specializedTankerTrackers social media account noted Friday after the vessel listedIskenderun as its destination that little could be read into it.
"Considerthis just a record update rather than anything substantial. We believe atransfer is still a few days away. Turkey will not import this oil," itsaid. It earlier described it as "aimlessly moseying around the Med".Tensions between arch-enemies Iran and the US have soared ever since Washingtonstepped up its campaign of "maximum pressure" against Tehran andreimposed sanctions after leaving the landmark 2015 nuclear deal last year.Syria, which has ports on the Mediterranean, is also under a raft of US andEuropean sanctions over its eight-year-old conflict. -Agencies