 Hello and welcome to News Clicks International Roundup. Today we have with us Prabir Pukhar Yafsat discussed the recent developments in the ongoing tanker wars between Iran and the UK. So Gibraltar has announced that the release of the Iranian super tanker Grace one along with its crew which also includes 24 Indians. But UK has said this is only happening because Iran has given an assurance that this ship, that this tanker will not go to Syria to transport oil. Which was the original reason that UK had given for seizing this tanker. So the question still remains Prabir that UK had said this was in violation of EU sanctions. So can UK continue to impose EU sanctions extra-territorially on countries which are not members of EU, of the European Union? Is this, does this follow the UN Convention for the Law of Seas? Well if you take the UN Convention for the Law of Seas, tank laws as you are referring to then this says that you must allow any ship to pass through such straits, straits of Gibraltar is one of them even if it falls within your territorial waters. And if they have what is called innocent passage that means if they are not threatening you militarily, they are not spying on you or they are not disrupting your communications which all of you, all of which can be done from the sea. Then they have a right of innocent passage and you cannot impose your legal laws, your laws on such ships. Question is transit of oil. If you look at Iran, Iran is not a part of the European Union, it does not therefore come under EU law. Therefore to claim that EU sanctions should be applicable on any ship including an Iranian ship because it is passing through territorial waters of Gibraltar or it is provisioning in Gibraltar, both would be in violation of to my understanding the UN law of seas. Question is what happens if you know the EU, an interesting law of EU has never actually asked for external sanctions, this has been said by the by UK and EU never made a statement in support of the Caesar of grace one. So the argument is that it seems that this is shall we say a fig leaf of the UK to essentially let the grace one tanker go because they are now trying to bargain with Iran on the Stena Impero which is what the Iranians had seized and they are also looking at the issue that if the hostilities with Iran continue in terms of tit for tat, Caesar of tankers that is quite possible that the UK flagged ships will not be able to use the states of harbors, the UK has said we are going to deploy our ships and so on but I think that is going to be little difficult. So I think this is really the acceptance by the UK that the tanker wars have to cease. It still begs the question why did the seas grace one at all and I think on that the issue has become shall we say much more clear today with the what we saw in the courts of the in the states of Gibraltar or in Gibraltar court which is that various people had said the ship had been seized at the instructions of the United States specifically of Bolton the national security advisor. This is a NSA Bolton's game plan to have the ship seized they had been tracking it they had been informing Spain as well as UK and UK carried it out at a point of time when its government was much more worried about its majority in parliament the Brexit issue and the instability in the British shall we say prime ministerial choice that there was really no prime minister at that point of time. So therefore it seemed that somebody in the British chain of command took the decision and Britain really wanted to get out of it. So US came out finally into the open and did move in the court of Gibraltar for continuing the seizure of grace one and it seems that the court has not yet taken a final decision but has already released the crew has released the drop the charges against the captain the first officer and the two mates all of who are presumed are actually Indians and it is also given say more or less clear indication they let the ship go. So in this context the US shall we say filing demand in the court for continued seizure does bring US out to the open and also makes clear that they were the ones who really the mover behind the seizure of grace one. It is also interesting that they have not given publicly what are the reasons on which they are seeking a continuation of the seizure in the court. So that still remains but I think it is very now it is very clear it was sanctions against Iran which they were imposing and it is not EU sanctions as even what UK continues to claim. And the last is Iran has also now after the Panama withdrew its flag from the ship has now reflagged it as a Iranian vessel has also changed its name. So it is very clear that they were using other flags which of course 90% of ships do they do not fly under their owners flag even Stena Impero as you know is a Swedish vessel which is flying a British flag. So this is a very common practice a lot of the countries fly Panamanian flags and so on. So but at this time after the Panama deflagged grace one Iranians have now come out openly claiming the ship which they had earlier and also now flagging it as an Iranian vessel. And also the question is that why is Britain choosing to back off now because Iran has also in fact come out and said that it has not given any assurance to UK about not going to Syria and also not really confirming if it was in fact going to Syria and as you have mentioned US has also demanded custody of the ship. So why is UK doing this now? I think it is very clear that UK has read the writing on the wall that their ability to protect the their flagged ships from the states of Hormuz is not there. There are two indications of that. One is the fact that if you look at the naval strength yes Iranian navy is not very strong if you talk about a far away theater but if you are talking the states of Hormuz they have shore batteries, they have missiles, missile batteries, they have radar which can check or really identify which vessels are where and they have fast attack boats. So states of Hormuz they outgun anything that UK can produce. UK has a couple of aircraft carriers and some ships destroyers and so on but they cannot match Iran in states of Hormuz because with the missile strength that is there it is very clear that big aircraft carriers are at risk if they come close to that. You cannot protect your own shipping if you have to operate say 500 kilometers away from the shore. So given the states of Hormuz the very narrow channels which are there I do not think there is any possibility of Britain being able to protect its ships not with the kind of navy it has. Can the United States do it? Yes if they bring all the naval power together with their allies and basically seize the states of Hormuz which is what they will have to do which means really a limited war if not a much larger war against Iran because they have then to take out all the coastal batteries the missile batteries all of it and a lot of them are mobile batteries. So I think those are the calls that the US would have to do do they go into a limited or shall we say a war which can spiral out of control with Iran and certainly the UK's threat that they will bring in ships they will protect their shipping which are using their flags all of it was just bravado. The reality is the British flagships have deflagged and changed flags because they don't want to be caught into this Iran UK shall we say tank a war and they finally therefore I think UK has seen the writing on the wall that this is untenable this is something which is getting them into serious issues with Iran and the other part of it is also if you take the European Union's position to which UK is a party that United States pulling out of the JCPOA the nuclear agreement with Iran was a mistake US was wrong and they are very keen to have it continue so it didn't sit well that while it was arguing for continuation of the nuclear agreement with Iran on behalf of the European Union and the same time it was also pulling out of all of this and in fact playing the US game so I think it this has been something which the UK particularly now that it has a government it has a prime minister I think they are sort of taking a little more self-interest into account instead of listening to what a Mr Bolton might have been telling them and also with this move by the UK do we see a sort of change in policy towards Iran from countries in the region and if so then what does this leave the US with what sort of options does the US have now you see the US has been trying for some time to get an armada shall we say under its command of its allies the NATO of course the United Kingdom being one of the parties which seemed at one point willing to be a party to it given what was happening on the tanker wars but it's also clear that the recent meeting in Bahrain in which they got together to work out how they proceeded the states of Orboz and providing shall we say military or naval cover to the shipping over there hasn't really taken off not that we can see publicly what there has been any concrete decisions on that so I think European allies are also very wary of getting into a shall we say naval blockade of the states of Orboz equivalent of actually saying we'll give protection because that's really talking war it would be in the war with Iran because I don't think Iran will let the states of Orboz be controlled by the United States and its allies in this particular way so I think that's very clear seizure of territorial waters of Iran would lead to a war over there so given that I think the allies are backing off and is particularly true for what you said the region the Emiratis the United Arab Emirates have also read the writing on the wall they seem to be pulling out of Yemen alliance with Saudi Arabia they seem to have given Iran assurances that they are not a party to an alliance military alliance against Iran and they will stay out of such a fight so unlike Saudis they seem to be backing out of the alliance of the United States wanted to build against Iran so if you take the major elements of that alliance it was really of course the United States but it was also Saudis and Emiratis of course Israel is the big player in the region which behind completely this attack on Iran so if it becomes only Israel and the United States there is trouble Saudis are still with them but the Emiratis seems to have pulled out how long will the Saudis continue will they continue to fight the Houthis will they continue to try and win the war against Yemen which at the moment not only they don't have a chance but in Yemen there have been serious attacks against Saudis continuously on the rare fields of the industrial infrastructure and they don't seem to be able to stop it now the Emiratis have pulled out and even the southern front has and become more active because there is a formation over there which is seized now Aden so with all of this I think the anti-Iran coalition in the region is also in some disarray and people are now beginning to realize that blockade of Iran stopping its oil imports is not going to be painless for them as well because Iran has the capability of inflicting pain and the UK has seen that this is true they got their tanker seized they had the devil ship Montrose which is quite close to the tanker they are not in a position to stop it so I think increasingly realization is coming that this brink pan ship that the US is imposing has cost for them and I think that's a good sign whether it will lead to any change in the US policy that we have to see thank you for joining us today and that's all the time we have thank you for watching