Three sources told Reuters news agency that the United States seized Iranian oil on a Russian-operated ship near Greece.
Sources noted that American officials will send the oil to the United States by another ship.
Last month, Greek authorities seized the Iranian-flagged Pegas, with 19 Russian crew members aboard, off the coast of the island of Euboea in the south of the country.
Greek authorities announced that the ship was seized due to EU sanctions against Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
However, the ship was later released amid confusion over the sanctions imposed on its owners.
The tanker, which changed its name to Lana on March 1 and has been flying the Iranian flag since May 1, has been near Greek territorial waters since its release. The ship previously carried the Russian flag.
A source from the Greek Maritime Ministry said in a statement today that the US Department of Justice “informed Greece that the cargo on the ship was Iranian oil”.
“The cargo was transferred to another US chartered vessel,” the same source told Reuters news agency, without providing further details.
The allegation came after the US imposed sanctions on the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps yesterday for what it described as a Russian-backed oil smuggling and money laundering network.
The sanctions were imposed at a time when Washington was trying to revive a nuclear deal with Iran.
American and Russian officials did not respond to Reuters news agency’s request for information.
Another Western source confirmed to the Reuters news agency that the oil on board was seized. The source said the oil was transferred to the Liberian-flagged tanker Ice Energy, operated by Greek shipping company Dynacom.
A source at Dynacom said that “oil shipments from the ship to Dynacom’s Ice Energy tanker are underway and Ice energy will then go to the United States.”
According to the news of Iran’s official news agency IRNA yesterday, the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the charge d’affaires of the Greek embassy in Tehran to the ministry after the cargo of an Iranian-flagged ship was seized in Greek waters.
According to the news, the Greek chargé d’affaires was informed about the Iranian government’s objections.
Greek government officials did not confirm IRNA’s report.
According to ship tracking data from Eikon, Ice Energy reported its position today moored near Euboea.
Pegas was among the five ships sanctioned by the United States on February 22, two days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The sanction is part of broader sanctions against Promsvyazbank, one of the banks Washington considers important to Russia’s defense sector.
The Russian owner of the ship, the shipping company Transmorflot, was sanctioned on 8 May.
The group called the United Front Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which monitors Iran’s tanker traffic and is headquartered in the USA, said that the Pegas ship loaded approximately 700,000 barrels of crude oil from Iran’s Sirri Island on August 19, 2021.
Prior to this load, Pegas transported over 3 million barrels of Iranian oil in 2021, with 2.6 million of these barrels reaching China, according to UANI’s analysis.
In 2020, Washington seized four cargoes of Iranian fuel bound for Venezuela and transferred them, with the help of unnamed foreign partners, to two ships bound for the United States.
These seizures follow a U.S. district court ruling in a lawsuit for cargo shipments.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is in indirect talks to relaunch the 2015 deal, in which world powers lifted international financial sanctions on Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program. Former President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the deal in 2018.
Talks appeared close to reviving the nuclear deal in March, but stalled after last-minute requests from Russia and uncertainty over whether Washington would remove the Revolutionary Guards from its terror list.
The chances of reviving the nuclear deal are shaky at best, and Washington is ready to tighten sanctions on Iran, Robert Malley, the top US official leading nuclear talks with Iran, said yesterday.