Ships under attack in the middle east

Caporegime
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As some people seem to be having significant difficulty understanding the differences between EU laws/sanctions and how they operate I made a simple to follow flow chart for them.

Gibraltar is a member of the EU.

As far as I'm aware no individual ships are members of the EU! Civilian ships son't have immunity from the laws of the territories they enter.
 
Man of Honour
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I find it 'concerning' that you have no concept of cause and effect here. Who started seizing tankers on spurious grounds first? Iran or the UK? Take your time...

I take it you took in absolutely nothing from the posts last night then... it doesn't take 2 seconds to find that Iran has been seizing ships on the exact same basis (as per the example I gave you with the Tigris) or even with complete lack of any justification for years and years so talking about who started it first or trying to define it specifically to tankers is completely spurious.

Iran hasn't needed anything from us to start disruptive activities against shipping in the Strait of Hormuz...

I find it amusing you band around inferred insults about people having "room temperature" IQ but the idiot in the room is you.
 
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Caporegime
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I did actually explain it in the post you quoted but I will reiterate if you wish, it's not the laws that don't apply, they do, it's the sanctions. There is no law that says you cannot take oil to Syria to get it refined, that is perfectly legal in of itself, however if an EU member state does it then they would be in violation of the EU sanctions on Syria which do say you can't and by violating those sanctions they would be breaking EU law.

Actually no, EU sanctions don't in themselves prohibit exporting oil to Syria (Jet fuel is covered though), they do however prohibit providing finance or resources to specific entities within Syria (the refinery in question being one of them).

They don't just apply to member states - you don't seem to quite grasp this but it isn't generally individual members states themselves that trade say oil, provide arms or finance etc.. but rather companies based within those member states.

EU law applies across the EU so you can't sit at a desk in an office in a bank in some EU member state and provide loans to the Syrian regime - it doesn't matter if the bank is say a Brazilian bank. You can't drive a truck full of cash (or arms) destined for some banned entity in Syria through an EU member state (it doesn't matter if you claim the truck belongs to say Russia)... and likewise, if you're going to ship oil to a banned entity... well you'd best not stop in EU territory!

That is literally how sanctions work - they can be enforced within the EU and indeed are enforced within the EU.

However the sanctions do not apply to non-EU members states and so if a non-EU state does it then they are not violating the sanctions as the sanctions do not apply to them, if they are not violating EU sanctions then they are not breaking EU law.

Again no one claimed they did apply to non-EU member states.

You really are being a bit thick here - Gibraltar is an EU member and so EU sanctions do apply there!

The Gibraltar Supreme Court judge probably knows a little bit more about the law here than you!
 
Man of Honour
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Actually no, EU sanctions don't in themselves prohibit exporting oil to Syria (Jet fuel is covered though), they do however prohibit providing finance or resources to specific entities within Syria (the refinery in question being one of them).

They don't just apply to member states - you don't seem to quite grasp this but it isn't generally individual members states themselves that trade say oil, provide arms or finance etc.. but rather companies based within those member states.

EU law applies across the EU so you can't sit at a desk in an office in a bank in some EU member state and provide loans to the Syrian regime - it doesn't matter if the bank is say a Brazilian bank. You can't drive a truck full of cash (or arms) destined for some banned entity in Syria through an EU member state... and likewise, if you're going to ship oil to a banned entity... well you'd best not stop in EU territory!

That is literally how sanctions work - they can be enforced within the EU and indeed are enforced within the EU.



Again no one claimed they did apply to non-EU member states.

You really are being a bit thick here - Gibraltar is an EU member and so EU sanctions do apply there!

The Gibraltar Supreme Court judge probably knows a little bit more about the law here than you!

Hence the reason for designating things like International straits in the first place - and likewise why it would be a bit silly to say take a holiday in parts of the Middle East and start shouting blasphemy against the Prophet, etc.
 
Caporegime
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Hence the reason for designating things like International straits in the first place - and likewise why it would be a bit silly to say take a holiday in parts of the Middle East and start shouting blasphemy against the Prophet, etc.

Indeed - according to @ubersonic 's logic I could park a yacht just off the beach in Saudi and host a Quran burning event...

Funny how he avoided the questions that quote obviously undermine his argument - like why would France and Spain be bothered about fishing rights after Brexit... according to his logic UK law won't apply to their vessels so they should be able to fish where they like in UK waters.
 
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Well not really, yes it's only illegal to import oil from Syria, but it's also illegal to:-

2. No funds or economic resources shall be made available, directly or indirectly, to or for the benefit of the natural or legal persons, entities or bodies listed in Annex II and IIa.

The annex contains several oil companies.

Been reading this some more and it's actually quite a weak Article (14) to rely on (not that I think EU law is relevant) hence why the Gibraltan Supreme Court held the hearings in secret.

Right, so no funds or economic resources shall be made available to the Syrian refinery? OK, so what are funds and economic resources? They are defined as follows:

"(j) ‘funds’ means financial assets and benefits of every kind, including but not limited to:


(i) cash, cheques, claims on money, drafts, money orders and other payment instruments;


(ii) deposits with financial institutions or other entities, balances on accounts, debts and debt obligations;


(iii) publicly- and privately-traded securities and debt instruments, including stocks and shares, certificates representing securities, bonds, notes, warrants, debentures and derivatives contracts;


(iv) interest, dividends or other income on or value accruing from or generated by assets;


(v) credit, right of set-off, guarantees, performance bonds or other financial commitments;


(vi) letters of credit, bills of lading, bills of sale;


(vii) documents evidencing an interest in funds or financial resources;

(f) ‘economic resources’ means assets of every kind, whether tangible or intangible, movable or immovable, which are not funds, but which may be used to obtain funds, goods or services;"

So the court would have to show that crude oil falls within the definition of funds and economic resources. Crude oil clearly can't be considered funds so it has to fall within economic resources. A bit of a stretch given that crude oil is already defined with the Regulations here:

(e) ‘crude oil and petroleum products’ means the products listed in Annex IV;

Given the separate definitions of crude oil and petroleum products (which is what the Iranian ship was carrying) and economic resources it's clear that they were considered two different things when drafting the Regulations.

If Article 14 was intended to be used to stop crude oil being sent to the Syrian refinery why didn't it say 'no funds, economic resources or crude oil and petroleum products' shall be made available instead? Because that Article wasn't meant for that.

There's already an Article (6) that deals specifically with oil shipments from Syria and that would have been the obvious place to put it if intended, but it only prohibits imports from Syria.

Pretty weak legal argument for Gibraltar to make if that's what they are basing it on.

Anyway, this EU law nonsense is a distraction. As ubersonic has said the US commanded it (as the Spanish gov has said) and we foolishly carried out their orders.

Otherwise we are expected to believe that the UK unilaterally decides to enforce EU sanctions in a way that hasn't been done by any member state prior in the years the sanctions were active. If they could ignore it so could we...

And where are the pronouncements from the likes of the EU Commission and their foreign policy department saying this is how the sanctions were intended to operate? Again, they are very quiet.
 
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I take it you took in absolutely nothing from the posts last night then... it doesn't take 2 seconds to find that Iran has been seizing ships on the exact same basis (as per the example I gave you with the Tigris) or even with complete lack of any justification for years and years so talking about who started it first or trying to define it specifically to tankers is completely spurious.

Iran hasn't needed anything from us to start disruptive activities against shipping in the Strait of Hormuz...

I find it amusing you band around inferred insults about people having "room temperature" IQ but the idiot in the room is you.

Stop deflecting and going off on a tangent as usual.

We are talking about recent events and it was the UK that seized an Iranian ship first which obviously led to Iran acting in retaliation.
 
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Stop deflecting and going off on a tangent as usual.

We are talking about recent events and it was the UK that seized an Iranian ship first which obviously led to Iran acting in retaliation.

I see what we are doing wrong... we should have blown up the Grace 1 with mines instead of seizing it!
 
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Well, no.

They define crude oil & products as there is specific legislation that applies to it. Crude oil though is still an economic resource.

Why use economic resource when there's a very clear term, crude oil and petroleum products, that they could have used for the sake of clarity but chose not to?

Funds could also be considered an economic resource but they chose to separate that out within Article 14 to be explicit, but didn't for crude oil when there was a clear definition they could have used?
 
Don
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Why use economic resource when there's a very clear term, crude oil and petroleum products, that they could have used for the sake of clarity but chose not to?

Funds could also be considered an economic resource but they chose to separate that out within Article 14 to be explicit, but didn't for crude oil when there was a clear definition they could have used?
Because economic resource doesn't start and end with oil, it covers everything else that meets the definition, but the definition of crude oil and petroleum products excludes all the other economic resources.
 
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Or, I dunno, we could have let it proceed on its way?

As it turns out seizing it hasn't worked out too well has it?

Iran has been threatening to interdict and disrupting shipping for awhile one way or another it was coming to this anyway - not like they haven't done it before as I pointed out. At best it would have kicked the can down the road for another day and potentially emboldened them if action wasn't taken.
 
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Because economic resource doesn't start and end with oil, it covers everything else that meets the definition, but the definition of crude oil and petroleum products excludes all the other economic resources.

As I said funds are economic resources too yet are treated distinctly within Article 14 yet crude oil hasn't even though there's a suitable definition.

If they had intended crude oil they would have said so by using the available definition, but didn't. Article 14 being some kind of catch all for everything is undermined by it treating funds distinctly.
 
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Iran has been threatening to interdict and disrupting shipping for awhile one way or another it was coming to this anyway - not like they haven't done it before as I pointed out. At best it would have kicked the can down the road for another day and potentially emboldened them if action wasn't taken.

'Embolden them' to...carry on selling oil. The horror.
 
Caporegime
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Why use economic resource when there's a very clear term, crude oil and petroleum products, that they could have used for the sake of clarity but chose not to?

Probably because it is intentionally broad and isn't just intended to apply to crude oil and petroleum products but any economic resources as it says! Keep in mind that part is concerned with entities financing the regime - why allow for loop holes there?

You were clearly shown to be wrong with you previous claims and now you're really trying to grasp at straws with this level of quibbling over the terms.
 
Don
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As I said funds are economic resources too yet are treated distinctly within Article 14 yet crude oil hasn't even though there's a suitable definition.

If they had intended crude oil they would have said so by using the available definition, but didn't. Article 14 being some kind of catch all for everything is undermined by it treating funds distinctly.
It is defined explicitly:

‘economic resources’ means assets of every kind, whether tangible or intangible, movable or immovable, which are not funds, but which may be used to obtain funds, goods or services

I'm not really seeing why you have a problem with this, economic resources are subject to sanctions, if this had been a cargo of gold or bottle caps, then it would have been subject to the same law as crude oil. The fact the crude oil and petroleum products is defined separately because it's subject to additional sanctions that prohibit the import of them from Syria doesn't mean they don't meet the definition of economic resources.
 
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