UK tanker docks in Dubai after detention by Iran
Iran unlawfully seized vessel to disrupt freedom of navigation
A British-flagged tanker that was detained by Iran for 10 weeks, docked in Dubai on Saturday, after a standoff that has stoked tensions along a vital global shipping route for oil.
The Stena Impero, which sailed out of Iranian waters on Friday, was seized by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on July 19, shortly after British forces detained an Iranian tanker off the territory of Gibraltar. The Iranian ship was released in August.
The Stena Impero docked at Dubai’s Port Rashid, a Reuters photographer reported from the harbor. Erik Hanell, the chief executive of Sweden’s Stena Bulk, which owns the ship, told Reuters in Stockholm in a text message earlier in the day that the tanker was “finally approaching berth in Dubai.”
Stena Bulk said the crew would receive medical checks and would be de-briefed in Dubai, which lies across the Gulf from Iran, before traveling home to their families. Seven of the 23 crew were freed earlier this month.
The crew who were still on the vessel came from India, Russia and the Philippines, a Stena Bulk spokesman said before the ship had docked.
“The crew are in high spirits, understandably. They will be checked by medical professionals once ashore, but the captain has informed us all are in good health,” he said.
The seizure of the vessel, which the Iranian authorities said was for marine violations, followed attacks on other merchant tankers in Gulf waters in May and June. The US blamed those attacks on Iran, which Tehran denied.
Relations between Iran and the US and its allies have deteriorated since Washington withdrew last year from a global agreement to rein in Tehran’s nuclear work and imposed sanctions aimed at shutting down Iranian oil exports.
Retaliation
The ship’s seizure was widely seen as a tit-for-tat move after authorities in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar detained an Iranian tanker on suspicion it was shipping oil to Syria in breach of EU sanctions. Tehran repeatedly denied the cases were related.
The Stena Impero sailed from Iran and into international waters of the Gulf on Friday morning, according to local authorities. “Despite the vessel’s clearance, its legal case is still open in Iran’s courts,” Hormozgan province’s maritime organization in southern Iran said on its website.
The tanker’s captain and crew have “given a written, official statement that they have no claims,” it added.
The vessel arrived off Dubai shortly after midnight local time (20:00 GMT) and halted in the busy waterway overnight, said ship tracking website MarineTraffic.com.