Iranian authorities are struggling to get their stories straight on the
capture of the British oil tanker Stena Impero this past week, with the Iranian Guardian Council spokesman suggesting it was purely a “reciprocal action” for Britain capturing an Iranian tanker earlier this month.
The Iranian Ports and Maritime Department, however, didn’t mention this
at all. Rather, they focused on the specific legal pretext of the
seizure, which presented the Stena Impero as having engaged in a sort of
hit-and-run accident in the Strait of Hormuz.
Officials maintain that the Stena Impero had collided with an Iranian fishing vessel, then
refused to respond when the fishing vessel tried to contact them.
Previous reports indicated that the tanker also shut off its transponder
in the area, though its not clear when that happened.
Iranian boats came out and captured the tanker at that point. Iranian
officials say that refusing to answer was a violation of maritime
regulations, and the Foreign Ministry says they’ll have to go through the legal process for this matter.
Whether that legal process happens or not remains to be seen, and there
seems to be a fairly good chance that at the end of the day, the two
nations simply trade their tankers back to one another in some sort of
compromise.
I see no reason not to believe that both conditions – a reciprocal action and a legal action – can happen simultaneously. For instance, there are probably a lot of cases where minor accidents happen in shipping, and the usual result is a fine to the shipping company, but no detaining of the vessel itself. Whereas if a country is detaining one of your vessels for political reasons, it is reasonable to escalate the minor legal issue to a political one. That is probably what’s happening here.
It’s like the case where Ukraine tried to move some of its naval vessels through the Kerch Strait. Russia allowed it when it was done in a legal manner, then a few months later Ukraine did it in such an illegal manner as to force Russia to seize the ships. Ukraine’s President Poroshenko was in an election battle at the time and wanted to stir up trouble with Russia – a political goal.
Yeah, that makes sense. UK had no basis besides US economic hegemon enforcement to seize the Iranian ship, so I fault UK in this one.
So why did the British steal the Iranian oil tanker in the v1st place ?
To provoke war, duh.
Following orders…