The Facts
The US Dept. of Justice acknowledged for the first time on Friday the seizure of a tanker carrying nearly 1M barrels of Iranian crude oil in April, claiming the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — designated a terrorist organization by Washington — was behind the shipment.
This comes as newly unsealed court filings reveal that the owner of the vessel, Suez Rajan Ltd., pleaded guilty in March to one count of conspiring to violate US sanctions against Iran, agreeing to a three-year probation period and a $2.46M fine.
The Spin
Pro-Iran narrative
The US has just confessed to acts of piracy against an oil tanker carrying Iranian oil in international waters, a practice in which Washington and its allies have engaged since the American withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. This is a blatant and unacceptable violation of the Iranian nation's rights.
Anti-Iran narrative
US sanctions on Iranian oil would alone justify the seizure of the oil tanker as it was part of a smuggling scheme in which multiple actors conspired to evade such sanctions, but there was more to it than that. The Suez Rajan was owned by an American private equity firm at the time of the transfer of oil, giving further leverage to US prosecutors.
