Iranian state media announced on Sunday that the Revolutionary Guards Corps captured another oil tanker on Wednesday. Officials accused the tanker of smuggling fuel to Gulf Arab states, and claimed it was an Iraqi ship.
This entire incident includes a lot of strange details, including that a tanker could be captured on Wednesday in the Persian Gulf and go unreported until Sunday, and then only because Iran announced it.
According to state media reports, the incident took place near tiny Farsi Island, in the Persian Gulf. The island has a Revolutionary Guards base, and that’s about it. They claim the ship in question had been picking up small amounts of fuel from various other ships in the Gulf, so as to try to smuggle the oil.
The point of all this smuggling is unclear. Iran says the tanker had 700,000 liters of fuel on it, and that seven foreign nations were detained in the operation. It’s not clear who owns the ship, despite Iranian officials calling it Iraqi. Since Iran is on good terms with Iraq, it is strange that an Iraqi ship would be seized at all. Iraq’s oil ministry denied connections to the ship in question.
This place seems kinda vacuou’s since Justin cast off for where ever one goe’s when finished or just ended in the conscious world. I miss his brash take and sober analyses especially in times like these. When our leaders are mad or feigning it to gain some advantage or booty.. Maybe it was Trump’s keen indifference to rational progress, always looking for the cheap fix and painless path forward. Stil, despite all his warts aND indifference to diplomatic dialog, fair play and common decency, I too was pleased to see him win because I was afraid Hillary would have caused the sort of trouble with Putin & Russia that. Trump seems driven to cause with Iran…
It was a fortunate departure of Justin before trump did anything unforgivable which Justin would have had to ignore and defend or join the folks who wholly disdain this man and his shallow grasp of decency and seemingly the common good of our nation & the world at large.
Sadly, Justin was at heart a Zionist, although he tried to cover that up in his articles. But all you had to do we read between the lines.
I disagree.
That is your privilege.
Can you provide some evidence to support this accusation..?????????
Of such between the lines reads in context, Perhaps you could provide a few of them for us to ponder for the taint you claim so outrightly…
Based on reading his columns over the last few years. You might have a different opinion, and that’s okay….at least until we are allowed free thought.
WTF do you mean, “untill we are allowed free thought” or maybe free speech too… just say write whatever cums to tongue.. No mind involved…. Bad enough speaking badly of the recently departed…… But to do so with no ready defence of the claim is unconscionable You should provide some reason for your accusation. Or withdraw your assertion..
If Justin was a Zionist, he hid it awfully well.
But keep in mind that for some people, “Zionist” is defined as “anyone who has ever, even silently, harbored the suspicion that somewhere, some time, in the history of the world, some bad thing has happened that wasn’t only and entirely Israel’s fault.”
He supported the existence of Israel on Palestinian land and that, ipso facto, makes him a Zionist
If he did that, presumably you can show it. Feel free to do so.
How about YOU show me one sentence where JR says the state of Israel is illegitimate. Get real.
In other words you made some shit up because you thought it would get a reaction. Why am I not surprised?
Iran sells gasoline domestically at near free prices. This gasoline subsidy is a way to share with the public the benefits of its oil industry. They refine their own oil and sell it for less than cost, or buy it on the world market and sell it at far, far less than cost.
Many oil producing countries do this, Venezuela is another example.
Always, it comes with a smuggling problem, because there is a lot of money to be made buying gasoline at such give-away prices and then selling it outside the country for far more, yet still less than world market.
The tanker in question is a tiny coastal products tanker, and 700,000 liters is only about 800 tons.
This is treated like money laundering or drug smuggling, a straight up crime making money from sneaking across borders. That is why nobody claims ownership, any more than anyone claims drug running submarines caught in the Caribbean. That is why nobody has protested.
Yeah Mark. Good comment, Closer to clear reality than mine, but don’t forget that they surely subsidize marine fuel too for fishing and food transport, and don’t forget the military.. In the Soviet Union it was even found those diverting freshly baked bread to feed pigs… It was seen as a treasonous betrayal of the revolution. And rightly so!! But this stuff happens when there are subsidies and price controls. Maybe the answer is simply far far tougher punishment for such chiseling…
Thank you. Yes, those domestic subsidies of whatever commodity are market distortions that always have blow back in the real world of people acting in their own best interests (even if that is illegal, as often in Cuba as an example today). The same is true of rationing. In fact, they are often the same things, as subsidy only applies to a ration. Black markets flourish just as smuggling flourishes. It is a price for the system. The US and Britain had the same experience with WW2 rationing and price regulations.
Someone knows the story on this vessel… We WILL find out who, what & why this seizure occurred, or at least the officia story and spin as to the allegations… As far as “the point of all this smuggling is unclear”….. The 9Iranians or “someone” supposedly in the know has put forward the view that the fuel on board the latest seized vessel was government owned, subsidized or provided fuel taken from vessels of Iran… as in diverted for non approved use by the subject seized vessel… It’s a common practise in many places. The operators & or crew of a vessel can sell.some of their fuel and pocket the money. And no one knows which way the fuel is going, whether the vessel is receiving fuel, or pumping it to a tank ashore, or onto I what appears to be a tanker selling fuel. How much fuel the vessel requires to make a certain passage, of catch a certain amount of fish can vary greatly depending upon conditions of tide, wind and the luck of catching the fish which makes it not so difficult for the.crew to skim fuel and sell it which is illegal
Or the “illegally transfered” story could be a lie and phoney pretext for the seizure. But let’s not forget WHO started these seizures. It was the Brits (whth a patently specious & transparent pretext in the first seizure… with Jon Bolt-on fingered as the perpetraitor… with the first seizure. Mustent forget Bolton is an Israeli sincophant.
Iran should seize ’em or sink ’em.
No need to sink any civilian ships. There can be no oops….we’re real sorry! We made a mistake, when there is sinking or death involved. There can be a very fine line between legal and illegal. Of course the power countries don’t really care whether their actions are legal as illustrated by the Brirish seizure of the initial vessel under the flimsiest of pertexts They have the trump card that prevails in any situation. Member of a gang gone rogue with nuclear weapons…
As Mark Thomason notes, this could very well be precisely what Iran says it is – the detaining of a smuggling ship. This would be the second such ship.
As I suggested before, Iran may be using ordinary law enforcement in a political manner – or it may simply be that the Western press is talking up incidents that are otherwise normal except for the heightened tensions. Or Iran might be making sure the West hears about these incidents in order to signal that they control the Straits, not the US.
In any event, these incidents are irrelevant. What matters is what Trump and his neocons intend to do. If they pursue this avenue of working up to a blockade of Iran, then Iran will have to react more forcefully.
Then Trump will have his excuse to start a war that he can then blame Iran for starting. If he’s concerned about the impact on the 2020 elections, that’s one way he can avoid being blamed for the war – just like Obama wanted war with Syria but wanted to avoid being blamed for it. Avoiding blame doesn’t mean they don’t want war or that they won’t get one started.