Iran Press/Iran News: Tweeting on Monday, Iran’s ambassador to London Hamid Baeidinejad wrote: "Impossible to advance a barter exchange of detained UK and Iranian ships as some British media suggest."
"The UK has illegally detained the ship carrying Iranian oil while the British ship is detained for violating some key safety/security regulations in Hormuz Strait," he added according to Iran Press.
Earlier, on July 27, Iran's Secretary of Supreme National Security Council, Admiral Ali Shamkhani, in meeting with Omani Foreign Minister said that unlike Britain's act of piracy on an Iranian oil tanker in the Strait of Gibraltar, Iran's action in seizing a UK oil tanker was legal and had been done within the framework of maritime international regulations.
The UK outlets had made the suggestion for the exchange, misinterpreting remarks made earlier by the head of Iran's Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, Kamal Kharrazi.
Kharrazi had expressed hope that the Britons would release the Iranian tanker, and also legal process in Iran would lead to the release of the British tanker too.
On July 4, British naval forces in the Strait of Gibraltar off Spain seized the supertanker Grace 1 on the accusation that it was carrying Iranian oil to Syria in violation of the European Union’s unilateral sanctions on the Arab country; That's while Iran is neither a member of the EU nor subject to any European oil embargo.
However, Iran’s Deputy FM Abbas Araghchi rejected the British claim, saying the tanker wasn’t heading for Syria at all.
Later on July 19, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy captured British oil tanker Stena Impero for violating international maritime laws when crossing the high-traffic Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.
According to the IRGC spokesman Brigadier General Ramezan Sharif, Iran had no choice but to impound the tanker, for safety reasons, and also because the oil tanker failed to respond to repeated warnings and messages sent to it by the IRGC navy. 104/208
Read more:
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Iran reveals safety issues which led to impounding of British oil tanker
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