FM: Iran tanker heading for Lebanon, not Turkey

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey, Mevlut Cavusoglu in Ankara, Turkey on 12 July 2019 [Fatih Aktaş/Anadolu Agency]

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that the Iranian tanker Adrian Daria (formerly called Grace 1), which was held in Gibraltar, is heading to Lebanon, not Turkey.

Cavusoglu’s statements come after the ship-tracking website MarineTraffic reported that Adrian Daria was headed for the southeastern Turkish port of Iskenderun.

This is the third time the tanker has changed course in the past ten days.

The Iskenderun port is located around 200 kiloemtres to the south of Syria’s Baniyas Refinery, which is believed to be the tanker’s original destination.

Adrian Daria is carrying two million barrels of oil. It was released from detention in Gibraltar in mid-August after a five-week confrontation amid speculation that it was carrying Iranian oil to Syria, in violation of sanctions imposed by the European Union.

READ: Bahrain FM defends Israel strikes on Iraq, Syria, Lebanon

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.