voice: By radio, a voice warns the ship's captain in English If you obey you will be safe . There is no doubt that the Friday seizure by Iranian Revolutionary Guards of a British-flagged tanker, the Stena Impero, was in part a piece of theatre intended to appease domestic clamour for Tehran to assert itself, according to The Guardian. It came in response to the UK military's 4 July detention of an Iranian tanker, the Grace 1, in Gibraltar, allegedly for shipping oil to Syria in breach of EU sanctions. To shouts of Allahu Akbar!, masked soldiers drop down ropes from a military helicopter on to a British oil tanker while Iranian navy speedboats surround the vessel. But the tit-for-tat response should also be evaluated as part of the Iranian attempt to push back against Donald Trump's unilateral abandonment of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, and his reimposition of economic sanctions. It is also fraught with risks of escalation, threatening to further complicate UK-Iran bilateral relations and endanger wider European efforts to save the JCPOA, the international deal that committed Iran to strict curbs on its nuclear programme, in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. UK defence minister rebuffs criticism over tanker seized in Gulf Read more It is not clear if this strategy will do much to convince an exasperated Iranian public suffering under sanctions.
(news.financializer.com). As
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