Zarif: Holding the oil tanker was completely illegal

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif once again rejected claims by the British government that the Iranian oil tanker had overturned European embargo laws.
This came in a tweet to the Iranian Foreign Minister on the social networking site “Twitter” I attached two pictures of the letters from the Iranian ambassador in London to the British Foreign Office.

Our London Embassy note to UKFCO:
-Protested the illegal detention of Grace1;
-Repeated public statements about destination; &
-Made it crystal clear that EU sanctions do NOT apply to Iran—a position shared by most Europeans.

Nothing changes the fact: detention was 100% unlawful pic.twitter.com/lwJ2gYKpf6

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) August 15, 2019

Referring to the British Foreign Office statement in support of the European embargo, he added: “Nothing has changed and the detention of the tanker Grace 1 was completely illegal,” the official IRNA news agency reported.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in another tweet on Thursday that Trump’s policies had failed to carry out economic terrorism against the Islamic Republic.

He writes that America has failed to achieve its goals through economic terrorism, including denying cancer patients private medicines.

He added that the United States has tried to exploit the legal system to encroach on our property in free waters, and that this maritime piracy effort is proof that Trump ignored the law.

On Thursday, Gibraltar authorities released the Iranian tanker Grace 1 after being held illegally for 40 days.

The United States has tried to block the release of the tanker, asking the Gibraltar government not to decide whether to release it, but its attempt failed.