War with Iran?

[Dill]

(07-31-2019, 05:03 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Then kindly show any proof that the UK seized the tanker due to US pressure or insistence.  Until you do so I'll take the UK's word on why they acted as they did.  Keep making excused for Iran though, it's enlightening. 

I await your next obnoxiously condescending post with ill disguised anticipation.

Pro-tip: worry less about condescension and refuting world views and follow closely the relation of statements to support.

Support for my claim that the British seizure of the Iranian tanker at Gibraltar IS related to (i.e., a consequence of) the US trashing of the Iran Deal.

1. Tanker detained by Gibraltar on U.S. request to Britain, Spain says
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-iran-tanker-spain-idUSKCN1TZ0ZT
MADRID (Reuters) - Gibraltar detained the supertanker Grace 1 after a request by the United States to Britain, acting Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said on Thursday.
Spain was looking into the seizure of the ship, suspected of carrying crude oil to Syria, and how it may affect Spanish sovereignty as it appears to have happened in Spanish waters, Borrell said

2. John Bolton, applauding the seizure, linked it to US efforts to cut off Iranian trade. Nothing about EU sanctions.
https://twitter.com/AmbJohnBolton/status/1146877026751647756?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1146877026751647756&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.france24.com%2Fen%2F20190704-iran-us-uk-syria-sanctions-seizure-iranian-oil-tanker

3. As stated in my previous post, the co-chair of the EU Council on Foreign Relations says the EU does not impose EU sanctions on non-EU nations. Iran is not an EU nation.  This undermines any claim that the seizure was about EU sanctions. Let's add this to that:
http://theconversation.com/eu-silence-over-british-seizure-of-iranian-tanker-is-a-telling-glimpse-of-post-brexit-future-120437

Acting upon intelligence that Iranian oil was being shipped to Syria, the chief minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo, requested help from the Royal Marines to seize the tanker. Picardo explained that Gibraltar was simply upholding sanctions laid down by the EU against the Syrian government by preventing a shipment of 2.1m barrels of light crude oil to one of its refineries. According to the British, once refined, it could have fuelled the regime’s tanks, armoured cars and troop carriers that operate alongside Russian forces currently waging havoc in Syria’s Hama region.

Despite this, there was no statement from the office of the European External Action Service, the EU body responsible for conducting the bloc’s foreign and security policy. Not a word of gratitude. Not even a nod. This was a deliberate and strategic use of silence. . . .

There was one tiny chink in the wall of EU silence that greeted news that the tanker had been seized. The European Council candidate to become the EU’s next foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, is an outspoken and often truculent Spanish politician. Unhappy in the first instance about the insensitive use of Gibraltar’s territorial waters, which Spain does not recognise, Borrell’s other preoccupation is European relations with Iran. In his role as Spain’s foreign minister he told media that the tanker had been seized following “a request from the United States to the United Kingdom”. He insinuated that the Americans had first offered the intelligence to Spain.

These points could be put in question by evidence that the EU regularly seizes assets of non-EU nations going to Syria. Still, you are left with the fact that both the Iranians and Bolton connect this event to a sanction regime re-activated in the wake of US trashing of the Iran Deal.  Were that deal still intact, there is no reason to believe the tanker would have been seized at Gibraltar, EU sanctions or not. 

Final point, if an effort to sort out what is actually going on with these seizures, what purpose drives them, is cast as "making excuses for Iran," then this frames out any disinterested effort to follow the logic of events. All analysis is implicitly presumed to be in service of supporting or attacking Iran.  That is, in effect, a requirement that analysis be biased in favor of one party or the other. Comments about my "excuses" for Iran, like my excuses for China in an earlier thread, are a kind of policing. They are complaints about absence of bias, absence of the right kind of bias.