Iranian authorities moved formally on Wednesday to confiscate a US-owned cargo of crude oil on a suezmax they hijacked nearly a year ago and have been detaining since.
The ruling relates to the 159,100-dwt Advantage Sweet (built 2012) and was issued by the Tehran court on international relations, local media said.
“The necessary orders … will be issued to unload the oil cargo,” said Tasnim — a semi-official Iranian news agency associated with the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Fars, another news agency linked to the Iranian regime, carried the news as well.
Asked to comment, an executive with the Advantage Sweet’s Switzerland-based managers Advantage Tankers said there was indeed “movement” in the case but that the company had not received any official documents yet.
The Marshall Islands-flagged tanker was intercepted on 27 April 2023 by Iranian forces in the Gulf of Oman.
It was carrying Kuwaiti crude on behalf of US major Chevron to Houston, Texas.
At the time, it was widely understood that Iran had seized the vessel in retaliation for prior moves by US authorities in Singapore to seize Iranian oil on the Greek-owned 159,100-dwt Suez Rajan (built 2011).
In its court decision released on Wednesday, the Iranian court said it had decided to seize the cargo of the Advantage Sweet after a lawsuit by Iranian skin patients starved of a Swedish medicine that can not enter the country due to US sanctions.
The Suez Rajan has not escaped Iran’s wrath as well.
After being forced by US authorities to unload its Iranian cargo in Texas — partly on behalf of victims of the 11 September 2001 terror attacks in New York for which Iran denies responsibility — the ship returned to the Middle East under its new name of St Nikolas.
When it arrived there off Oman, Islamic Revolutionary Guards forces hijacked the ship, which has remained in Iranian custody.
