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| British Oil Tanker Leaves Iran | |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| The British-flagged oil tanker that was seized by Iran two months ago was heading to international waters on Friday, Iranian officials said, but only after a strange turn of events in which it left a port on the Strait of Hormuz, stopped about five miles offshore, and then resumed moving. | |
| The Iranian Ports and Maritime Organization confirmed that the tanker, the Stena Impero, had left Bandar Abbas, according to the state-run IRNA news agency, although data from MarineTraffic.com, which tracks ships at sea, showed the boat just offshore and stationary. | |
| The ship and its crew were caught up in the broader dispute between Iran and the West, and the decision by the authorities in Gibraltar to release an Iranian tanker that was impounded last month had raised hopes for a quick release of the Stena Impero. | |
| The start-stop nature of the tanker’s departure was in keeping with the uncertainty that has surrounded the ship ever since it was impounded by the Iranian authorities on July 19, apparently in retaliation for the seizure of an Iranian vessel off Gibraltar that was believed to be heading for Syria. | |
| The Stena Impero’s owners were told that the vessel was free to go on Monday, but it remained in port after as an Iranian official said that although a detention order had been lifted, it could not leave the country until an inquiry into the ship’s conduct was completed. | |
| The case remains opens and the investigation will continue, with a final report to come later, IRNA reported, but it was unclear what significance that holds if the ship is no longer in Iranian territory | |
| But the ship remained in its port along the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for the transport of oil. Even after the authorities in Iran on Monday said that the British ship could leave — an announcement that seemed to suggest an imminent resolution of the matter — its departure had stalled. | |
| “Despite public statements by Iranian authorities over the past three days that judicial proceedings have concluded, and the Stena Impero is free to leave Iran, the vessel remains detained at anchor in Bandar Abbas,” Erik Hanell, the president of Stena Bulk, the ship’s Swedish owner and operator, said in a statement on Tuesday. “We continue to work hard to secure the release of the crew and vessel. Upon release of the vessel we will release a further statement.” | |
| Iran had accused the Stena Impero of violating maritime regulations in the Strait of Hormuz, but the seizure on July 19 was widely seen as retaliation for the detention of the Iranian vessel, the Grace 1, which has since been renamed the Adrian Darya 1. That vessel was accused of carrying oil to Syria, which authorities in Gibraltar said violated a European Union embargo. | |
| The dispute over the ship has played out against a backdrop of rising tensions between Iran and the United States, the United Kingdom, and their allies in the Arab world, most notably Saudi Arabia, Iran’s chief rival in the region. | |
| Most recently, Iran has denied accusations that it was responsible for an attack on two major oil installations in Saudi Arabia, and there have also been conflicts over the 2015 agreement intended to curb Iran’s nuclear program, American sanctions on Iran, the seizures of oil tankers, and the shooting down of drones, all of which have led to fears of all-out war in the region. |