According to British newspaper ‘telegraph’, Gibraltar’s leader attempted to deescalate the crisis with Iran over the fate of an oil tanker on Friday, saying it was “difficult to see” whether Tehran breached an agreement not to sell its oil to Syria.
Iran had previously stressed that it had given no assurances to a court in Gibraltar that it would not deliver the seized supertanker’s two million barrels of crude oil to Syria in order to secure its release by the Gibraltar authorities.
Now 'telegraph' has cited Gibraltar’s chief minister Fabian Picardo as saying that “you can see from the images that the oil [the Iranian oil tanker Adrian Darya 1] has ended up in Syria but that’s not to say that there’s a breach of the undertaking [by Iran].”
Picardo added “we did not have an undertaking that the oil would not end up in Syria. We had an undertaking from the Iranian government that they would not sell the oil to any EU sanctioned entity.”
His remarks come after the Iranian Ambassador to the UK Hamid Baedinejad said in a meeting with the UK foreign secretary last Wednesday that the oil unloaded by the Iranian oil tanker Adrian Darya 1 belonged to a private company and the company could decide where to receive it.
After the Gibraltar’s chief minister said that it was “difficult to see” whether Tehran breached an agreement not to sell its oil to Syria, the Iranian ambassador to London used his remarks as evidence that Iran made no commitments to the UK and Gibraltar to secure the release of the renamed Adrian Daryan 1 but the oil tanker was released as a result of the Iran’s legitimate political and diplomatic power.
In a series of tweets, Baedinejad rejected as ‘lies’ the claims that Iran made ‘heavy commitments’ to secure the release of the previously named Grace 1.
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