Tehran, August 19: The Iranian Grace1 oil tanker has departed from Gibraltar amid diplomatic disputes after the Gibraltar Supreme Court ordered to release the vessel, seized by Britain, and rejected a request by the United States to seize further the vessel.
As per the monitoring site Marine Traffic, the Grace1 vessel lifted anchor at around 23:00 GMT on Sunday evening. The tracking website showed the oil tanker moving east direction into the Mediterranean and arrived in Greece as its destination.
The vessel, now renamed Adrian Darya 1, previously knows as Grace1 supertanker.
A senior Iranian official on Monday was quoted as stating the crisis in Iran-British relationship wouldn’t get ended until the vessel reached its destination, according to Al-Jazeera news reports.
Semi-official ISNA news agency has quoted a member of parliament’s national security and foreign affairs committee, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, as saying, “Until the Iranian oil tanker arrives at its destination the British must help end the crisis..”
“This means that the crisis with Britain is not over. Britain has the primary responsibility for ending the oil tanker crisis,” Falahatpisheh said.