Britain offers to release impounded Iranian tanker as it seeks to defuse tensions

Jeremy Hunt sought to defuse tensions with Iran on Saturday, offering to release an impounded Iranian oil tanker in Gibraltar that had become the centre of an international crisis.

The foreign secretary told counterpart Mohammed Javad Zarif in a “constructive call” that the UK would facilitate the Grace 1’s release “if we received guarantees that it would not be going to Syria, following due process in Gibraltar courts.”

“(I) was told by Zarif that Iran wants to resolve issue and is not seeking to escalate,” Mr Hunt tweeted.

Royal Marines seized the supertanker on July 4 on suspicion of violating EU sanctions against Syria, where the UK believed it was heading with two million barrels of crude oil.

Days later, Iranian Revolutionary responded by harassing a Royal Navy ship shadowing a British tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, forcing it to train its guns on the vessels.

Tehran, which maintained the oil was not meant for President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, had warned the UK that if it did not release the vessel there will be serious consequences.

“This is a dangerous game,” a foreign ministry official warned on Friday.

The British Foreign Office has been keen to stress it is keeping separate the issues of Iranian threats in Gulf waters, EU sanctions policy on Syria, and the nuclear deal.

But this holds little water with Iran, which sees the UK’s move in Gibraltar as a sign it is not acting in good faith as they attempt to resuscitate the 2015 accord.

“It is quite a nuanced difference,” said Charles Hollis, a former British diplomat in Tehran. “The big story is the confrontation over the nuclear deal and although this is, legally and diplomatically, a separate issue, in the minds of Iranians it is quite a fine distinction.”

Mr Hollis, who held posts in Iran, as well as Iraq and Saudi Arabia, told the Sunday Telegraph that the UK needed a more coherent policy on Iran, as any “misunderstanding or miscalculation” could lead to an escalation in the current climate.

“Military chiefs are very vigilant and doing what they can, but at the top level, there are clearly other things that are a priority at present,” said Mr Hollis, who now works as managing director of risk management Falanx Assynt.

“There isn’t much of a clear foreign policy,” he said, which could be a danger if it is exploited by the Iranians.

In response to  the July 4 incident, Iran announced it had increased its enriching of uranium to above the 3.7 per cent cap agreed under the 2015 accord. Proliferation experts said the amount was so incremental, however,  it should be viewed as “a cry for help” rather any statement of intent.

There is some suggestion that the UK authorities in Gibraltar were acting at the behest of the US, which has its own sanctions against Tehran and is pushing Britain to come off the fence.

One diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, intimated that he would have been relieved if the tanker had taken a different route and not presented the UK with the dilemma.

The sentiment was echoed by Lord Howell, a former Conservative cabinet minister and chairman of the Lords international relations committee, who asked the government this week whether it “was such a good idea to raid the Iranian oil tanker in Gibraltar in the first place.”

After the July 4 incident, Iran announced it had increased its enriching of uranium to above the 3.7 per cent cap agreed under the 2015 accord. Proliferation experts said the amount was so incremental, however, it should be viewed as “a cry for help” rather any statement of intent.

There is some suggestion that the UK authorities in Gibraltar were acting at the behest of the US, which has its own sanctions against Tehran and is pushing Britain to come off the fence.

One diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, intimated that he would have been relieved if the tanker had taken a different route and not presented the UK with the dilemma.

The sentiment was echoed by Lord Howell, a former Conservative cabinet minister and chairman of the Lords international relations committee, who asked the government this week whether it “was such a good idea to raid the Iranian oil tanker in Gibraltar in the first place?”

“Obviously we want to stop oil getting to President Assad, although probably he can get all the oil he wants from Russia. Are we not supposed to be on the same side as the Iranians on the question of nuclear proliferation and control? Can we have a firm assurance that we did this not just at the say-so of the US?”

The UK now finds itself walking a tricky tightrope. On the one hand it wants to preserve the US special relationship, and is under pressure from hawks within the Trump administration to take a firmer stance on Iran.

On the other, it agrees with fellow EU signatories to the landmark 2015 nuclear accord that they must do all the can to keep it alive.

European foreign ministers are due to meet on Monday as they try to get members to buy into their idea for an Instex (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges) barter-style system that would allow the bloc to circumvent the US’s sanction and carry on trading with Tehran.

Iran has given them a September deadline to show it the nuclear deal can work without Washington.

Analysts agreed the UK’s lack of a clear policy on Iran was likely confusing the Islamic Republic’s leaders.

"With Iran not being high on the list of British priorities right now, policy is piecemeal rather than strategic,” Sanam Vakil, who heads the Iran Forum at Chatham House, told the Sunday Telegraph.

“In theory, the policy would be to work with the E3 (France and Germany) and the US to bridge the divide and the differences, offer diplomacy while also pressure in a coordinated multilateral way,” she said. “But because we don’t know about the future direction of British policy vis-a-vis the US or the EU, there is a lot of hedging going on.”

However, she did not think it was “2003 moment”, referring to the days before the US invasion of Iraq.

“I don’t think we are about to go to war,” she said. “At least until there is a new prime minister who can define objectives.

“I think that is the assumption, that if Boris Johnson becomes prime minister the UK will align more closely with US policy.”