Ioannis E. Kotoulas
IPT News, June 23, 2022
“Who is a thief?” You stole our oil and we took it back from you! Taking back stolen property is not theft! It is you who are thieves! The Americans order the Greek government and they obey by stealing our oil.”
Iran’s defiance of the norms of international law and its subversion of the West continues with no relenting in its intensity and scope. Now, Iran once again sparks tension in the Persian Gulf by embarking on state-sponsored piracy, while its enrichment of uranium has reached the dangerous weapons-level grade.
On May 27, the notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in cooperation with the Iranian Navy, launched a helicopter raid to seize two Greek oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. The “Prudent Warrior” and “Delta Poseidon” were sailing in international waters, 22 nautical miles off the coast of Iran. The Greek Foreign Ministry condemned Iran’s actions as “tantamount to acts of piracy.”
This incident happened just days after Athens announced that it would abide by U.S. sanctions on Russia by handing over a reported 700,000 barrels of Iranian crude oil from the Russian-flagged tanker “Lana.” The ship is owned by Russia’s Promsvyazbank, a bank critical to Russia’s defense sector. The U.S. Treasury designated the bank on Feb. 22 – just two days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine – “for operating or having operated in the defense and related materiel and financial services sectors of the Russian Federation economy.”
Ioannis E. Kotoulas (Ph.D. in History, Ph.D. in Geopolitics) is Adjunct Lecturer in Geopolitics at the University of Athens, Greece.
To view the original article, click here