Iraq News Now

A

former senior commander with Iran's Revolutionary

Guard Corps has warned it would be Tehran's "duty" to seize a British

oil tanker if the Iranian tanker being held in Gibraltar is not released.
The

vessel was stormed by British Royal Marines and

Gibraltar port and law enforcement agencies in the early hours of Thursday

morning as it was believed to have been carrying oil to Syria, in

possible violation of European Union sanctions.
Mohsen

Rezaee, who is currently Secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council -- an

advisory body to Iran's Supreme Leader -- tweeted that "if the UK does not

release the Iranian oil tanker, our officials are duty-bound to reciprocate and

seize a British oil tanker."
Rezaee

previously served as commander of the IRGC and it is unclear if he's currently

involved in military decision making.
The

British Foreign and Commonwealth Office told CNN it had no comment, at the

moment, in response to the tweet.
Gibraltar's

government said in a statement Friday that it is extending the detention of the

supertanker by 14 days after obtaining an order from the British territory's

Supreme Court.
"The

Supreme Court has issued today's order on the basis that there are reasonable

grounds to consider that the detention of the Grace 1 is required for the

purposes of compliance with the EU Regulation 36/2012 on sanctions on

Syria," the statement said.
On

Thursday Gibraltar's chief minister Fabian Picardo said territory authorities

had reason to believe the Grace 1 "was carrying its shipment of crude oil

to the Baniyas Refinery in Syria."
He

added that the refinery "is the property of an entity that is subject to

European Union sanctions against Syria."
The EU

imposed a number of financial, trade and transport sanctions against Syrian

President Bashar al-Assad's regime in 2011 in response to "the

continuing brutal campaign" against its own people.
The

Syrian government has yet to respond to the incident.
A

senior Iranian Foreign Ministry official and Spain's acting foreign minister

Josep Borrell both said the United States had asked the UK to intercept the

ship.
However,

Gibraltar's government said in a statement that there was "no political

request at any time from any government" that the vessel should be

detained.
"The

decisions of Her Majesty's Government of Gibraltar were taken totally

independently, based on breaches of existing law and not at all based on

extraneous political considerations," the statement read, adding that they

"were certainly not decisions taken at the political behest or instruction

of any other state or of any third party."
While several online shipping trackers say the vessel was

sailing under the flag of Panama, the Panama Maritime Authority (PMA) said in a

statement that Grace 1's registry was canceled on May 29 after it was notified

the ship may be participating or linked to financing terrorism.
"The PMA ... was notified of the international alert

regarding the vessel GRACE 1, which indicated that this vessel might be

participating or being linked to the Financing of Terrorism, or in support of

the destabilizing activities of certain regions led by terrorist groups,"

the PMA said.
Seizure

of vessel 'illegal,' Iran says
On Thursday the British ambassador to Tehran was summoned in

Iran over the "illegal" seizure of the oil tanker, a spokesman for

Iran's Foreign Ministry Abbas Mousavi tweeted.
The operation was condemned by a senior Iranian Foreign Ministry

official, who called it "piracy," according to a report from the

semi-official Tasnim news agency on Friday.
The official said the UK does not have the right to implement

its or the EU's unilateral sanctions against other nations "in an

extraterritorial manner" and called for the vessel to be released

immediately after it had been seized "at the behest of the US."
Mousavi

said that that Grace 1's detainment could increase tensions in the Persian

Gulf, the state-run Press TV reported.
The

ship is currently anchored off the coast of Gibraltar, a British overseas

territory on the edge of southern Spain.
It

comes at a time of heightened tensions between the US and Iran. Earlier this

week, Iran announced it would stop complying with

several parts of the 2015 nuclear deal that the Trump

administration withdrew from last year.
On

Thursday the UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) welcomed what it called "firm

action by the Gibraltarian authorities, acting to enforce the EU Syria

sanctions regime."
While

John Bolton, national security adviser to US President Donald Trump, also

chimed in with the tweet: "America & our allies will continue to

prevent regimes in Tehran & Damascus from profiting off this illicit

trade," he wrote.
Tanker 'loaded Iranian oil months ago'
In mid-April, the Grace 1 loaded up with Iranian oil and turned

off its tracking signals to avoid detection before sailing around the Cape of

Good Hope in southern Africa to the Strait of Gibraltar, according to an

article published in maritime publication Lloyds List earlier this

week.
"Any tanker with Iranian crude follows a similar pattern of

behavior: they do that by turning off their AIS transponder, turning it on and

off in order to circumvent being tracked," Michelle Wiese Bockmann, the

author of the article, told CNN on Thursday.
"They have deliberately taken measures to circumvent

identifying the ship's destination, location and cargo origin."
Samir

Madani, co-founder of Tanker Trackers -- which monitors vessels through

satellite and maritime data -- told CNN that the Grace 1's journey around

Africa took two-and-a-half months, a month longer than usual. He added that he

did not believe the vessel was carrying crude oil but instead fuel oil from

Iran's Abadan Refinery.
"We

can also see that she is heavily laden in the water. Her hull is 22.5 meters

deep, meaning that she is carrying 2 million barrels of a very heavy liquid.

Heavier than crude oil," he said. "Not only that, but her previous

assignments were transfers of fuel oil in Umm Qasr (Iraq) and Khor Fakkan

(UAE)."
Madani

also added that he believes the ship's destination was not Syria's Baniyas

Refinery as the waters would be too shallow for the vessel to enter.
"Instead,

we believe that the fuel oil was intended for ship-to-ship transfers to other

vessels within Syria's maritime borders," Madani said.