Iran pledges concessions if U.S. lifts sanctions

Comes after Tehran seizes mystery tanker

BEIRUT • Iran will formally and permanently accept enhanced inspections of its nuclear program, the country’s foreign minister said Thursday, in exchange for the U.S. lifting sanctions.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, in New York for talks at the UN, said: “It’s not about photo ops. We are interested in substance.” He added: “There are other substantial moves that can be made.”

The move is unlikely to be warmly received by the Trump administration, which wants sweeping concessions, including cessation of uranium enrichment and support for proxies and allies in the region.

“If they (the Trump administration) are putting their money where their mouth is, they are going to do it,” said Zarif. “They don’t need a photo op. They don’t need a two-page document with a big signature.”

His comments came after the mysterious apparent seizure by Iran of a tanker in the Persian Gulf with Revolutionary Guards claiming to have towed the foreign ship for “smuggling fuel.”

The vessel was reported to have been intercepted south of Iran’s Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday and its 12 crew members arrested. “In a bid to identify and fight organized smuggling ... the patrol boats of the Guards’ naval forces abruptly stopped one of the foreign vessels which carried 1 million litres of smuggled fuel,” the Guards said.

However, the circumstances surrounding the incident were murky, with no country claiming ownership of the Panama-flagged MT Riah, which began her journey on July 5 off the Dubai coast and went missing on July 14.

The tanker was tracked near the Ras al-khaimah coast before she changed course for Iranian waters where the signal stopped on Sunday at 4:30 a.m.

Iran claimed it answered a distress call from the disabled tanker. But no other nation reported receiving a call.

According to Lloyd’s List Intelligence data, the ship made no port calls over the past year, had 27 “dark” days, met 55 times with another vessel, and had trading patterns characteristic of clandestine ship-to-ship transfers.

It said turning off the automatic identification system, known as “going dark,” was frequently done by tankers loaded with Iranian crude, in order to avoid detection and evade sanctions.

Experts suggested the amount of cargo on board was so insignificant it was likely Tehran only towed the vessel to put on a show of strength after Britain impounded an Iranian supertanker earlier this month.

“Our analysis right now is that nothing has actually happened,” Tankertrackers. com wrote on Twitter.